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THE GOSPEL RECORDS 



THEIR 



GENUINENESS, AUTHENTICITY, HISTORIC VERITY, AND INSPIRATION, 



WITH SOME 



PRELIMINARY REMARKS ON THE GOSPEL HISTORY. 



BY 



WILLIAM NAST, D. D. 



A REVISED EDITION OF TEE AUTHOR'S GENERAL INTRODUCTION TO THE FIRST 
VOLUME OF HIS COMMENTARY ON THE NEW TESTAMENT. 



CINCINNATI: 
PUBLISHED BY HITCHCOCK & WALDEN 

1868. 



£> 






Entered, according to Act of Congress, in the year 1866, 

BY POE & HITCHCOCK, 

In the Clerk's Office of the District Court for the Southern District 

of Ohio. 

IN EXCHANGE. 

Stew TbeoL Sean. 

JAN 24 )9Ub 



nTTEODUCTOET NOTICE. 



-•#< 



The appearance of Dr. Nast's " General Introduc- 
tion to the Gospel Eecords" in the present form, is 
necessitated by the fact that several institutions of 
learning have adopted it as a text-book of Christian 
evidences, and that it has also been introduced by the 
bishops of the Methodist Episcopal Church into the 
course of ministerial study. The present form will 
meet the wants of the student, and it is hoped also 
will lead to a much wider circulation among general 
readers. After the high authorities who have already 
pronounced favorably on the valuable character of 
this work, in its relation to the evidences of Christi- 
anity, and especially since its adoption as a text-book 
by the Board of Bishops, it is needless for us to com- 
mend it. 

It is not designed to be an exhaustive discussion 
of the evidences of Christianity. Originally intended 
to be used only as introductory to the author's Com- 
mentary, it treats chiefly of those subjects which are 
most intimately connected with the historical verity 
of the Gospel Eecords. The whole argument re- 
volves about the personality of our Lord and Savior ; 
and herein are found its strength and opportuneness. 
The surest argument for the divine origin of Christi- 
anity is Christ himself. His life, as contained in the 
Gospels, being demonstrated as a historical reality, 



4 INTRODUCTORY NOTICE. 

all else follows. If the Gospels, examined by the ac- 
knowledged laws of historical criticism, are proved 
to be genuine and authentic historical records, the 
history which they contain is itself a Divine revela- 
tion in the person of Jesus Christ, a personality ut- 
terly inexplicable without the admission of a super- 
natural and Divine element. Nor can any better 
evidence be offered for the historical verity of these 
sacred records than the character of the wonderful 
Being whose history they relate. The Christ de- 
scribed by the Evangelists could not possibly have 
been conceived by them, if they had not seen and 
heard what they record of him, and if so, his per- 
sonality is historically proved, and that personality 
is God manifest in the flesh. 

The opportuneness of this argument is seen in the 
fact that the great battle of infidelity in our day is 
raging about the person of Christ, so that the au- 
thor's argument is not only the strongest that can 
be presented, but is also the one that brings him di- 
rectly into antagonism with the most recent phases 
and objections of skepticism* This treatise, therefore, 
commends itself to the reader as the embodiment of 
the results of the most recent criticism of the his- 
torical trustworthiness of the Gospel Eecords, and as 
a fresh, and in many respects original consideration 
of the most recent objections of rationalism and infi- 
delity. We have only to add that the author has in 
this edition made some valuable additions from Dr. 
Tischendorfs lately-published essay, entitled, "When 
were our Gospels Composed ?" These are inserted in 
Part II, chapter 1. 

I. W. WILEY. 



CONTENTS. 



Hi 

PART I. 

THE GENUINENESS OR INTEGRITY OF THE SACRED TEXT. 

PAGE. 

J 1. Introductory Remarks 11 

CHAPTER I. 

THE HISTORY OF THE TEXT. 

§ 2. The Change of the Original Text with regard to its outward 

Appearance 13 

§ 3. Some General Remarks on the Existing Manuscripts of the 

New Testament 16 

§ 4. A Consideration of the Variety of Readings presented by the 

Manuscripts of the New Testament 20 

CHAPTER II. 

THE IMPOSSIBILITY OF SUCCESS IN AX ESSEXTIAL MUTILATION OR 
CORRUPTIOX OF THE GOSPEL RECORD. 

§ 5. Argument from the Agreement of the Respective Copies of 

the Four Gospels 27 

§6. Arguments drawn from Other Considerations 33 



PART II. 

THE AUTHENTICITY OF THE GOSPEL RECORDS. 
§ 7. Introductory Remarks 45 

CHAPTER I. 

THE OUTWARD HISTORICAL TESTIMONIES. 

§8. The Testimony of the Apostolic Fathers 47 

§ 9. The Testimony of the Fathers in the Sub-Apostolic Age, 

from A. B. 120-170 64 

5 



6 CONTENTS. 

PAGE. 

§ 10. The Formation of a Canon of the universally-acknowledged 
Books of the New Testament at the Close of the Second 

Century 78 

§ 11. The Early Versions of the New Testament 85 

§ 12. The Testimony of Heretical and Apocryphal Writings 91 

§ 13. The Testimony of Heathen Adversaries 120 

CHAPTER II. 

THE INTERNAL EVIDENCES. 

§ 14. The Peculiar Dialect of Greek in which the Evangelists 

have written 125 

§ 15. Some other Characteristics of the Style in which the Gospels 

are written 138 

§ 16. The Frequent Allusions of the Evangelists to the History of 

their Times 141 

§ 17. The Kelation of the Four Gospels to Each Other and to the 

Acts of the Apostles 162 

§ 18. The Authenticity of the Gospels — a Postulate of Reason, as 
it alone accounts for the Existence of the Christian 
Church, and for some of Paul's Epistles, whose authen- 
ticity is universally admitted 167 

§ 19. The Absurdity of the Mythical Theory 197 



PART III. 

THE HISTORIC VERITY OF THE GOSPEL RECORDS. 
§ 20. Introductory Remarks 199 

CHAPTER I. 

A CONSIDERATION OF THE OBJECTIONS THAT HAVE BEEN RAISED 
AGAINST THE CREDIBILITY OF THE EVANGELISTS. 

§ 21. The Alleged Discrepancies or Contradictions in the Four 

Gospels 200 

§ 22. The Assumption that Miracles are Impossible and Unsus- 
ceptible of Proof 205 

§ 23. The Alleged Lack of Sufficient Testimony by Profane 

Writers 219 



CONTENTS. 7 

CHAPTER II. 

THE CREDIBILITY OF THE EVANGELISTS. 

PAGE. 

§ 24. The Evangelists were in a Condition to inform themselves 
accurately and thoroughly concerning the Things which 
they Record 224 

§ 25. The Evangelists exhibit in their Narratives no Symptoms of 
Mental Derangement which might have made them Vic- 
tims of Delusion 225 

J 26. The Evangelists can not be charged with having had any 
Motive or Design to impose upon the World a Report of 
what, if it did not take place, they must have known to 
be false 227 

CHAPTER III. 

THE DIVINE SEAL STAMPED UPON THE GOSPEL HISTORY BY ITS 
SUBJECT — THE PERSON OF JESUS CHRIST. 

J 27. The Verity of the Gospel History best accredited by the Per- 
sonality of Jesus Christ 231 

# 28. The admitted Outer Conditions of the Life of Jesus — leav- 
ing its astounding Results, as well as the unlimited Scope 
of the Mind of Jesus and the Perfect Symmetry of his 
Character, utterly inexplicable, without the admission of 
a Supernatural and Divine Element 235 

§ 29. The Sinlessness of Jesus — the Idea of which could not have 
been Conceived by the Evangelists, if they had not seen 
it actualized in his Life — incontestably proving that he 
was not a mere Man 256 

§ 30. The Miracles Wrought on and Performed by Jesus, the Nat- 
ural and Necessary Outflow of his historically-proved 
Personality, and, at the same time, the Ground and "War- 
rant of all other true Miracles Preceding and Succeeding 
his Appearance on Earth 290 



PART IV. 

THE ATTACKS OF MODERN CRITICISM ON THE INSPIRATION OF 
THE FIRST THREE GOSPELS. 

§ 31. The Relation which the Authenticity and Credibility of the 

Gospel Records bear to their Inspiration 305 



8 CONTENTS. 

PAGE. 

§ 32. The Peculiar Agreement and Disagreement of the first three 
Evangelists in their Narratives, and the Various Expla- 
nations of this Singular Phenomenon 309 

§ 33. A Consideration of the Inspired Character of the Synoptical 
Gospels on the Ground of their being chiefly the Result 
of the Oral Teaching of the Apostles 327 



PART V. 

REMARKS ON THE GOSPEL HISTORY. 

§ 34. The Condition of the World, Jewish, Greek, and Roman, at 

the Advent of Christ 349 

§ 35. The Chronology and Harmony of the Gospel Narratives 362 

A. The Date of the Birth of Christ 364 

B. The Duration of our Lord's Ministry, and the Date of 
his Death 369 



PAET I. 
THE GENUINENESS OR INTEGRITY OF THE SACRED TEXT. 



THE 



GOSPEL RECORDS. 



-♦•♦- 



PART I. 

THE GENUINENESS OH INTEGRITY OE THE SACRED TEXT. 



-♦♦♦- 



§1. INTRODUCTORY REMARKS. 

It is to be regretted that nearly all English writers 
on the Evidences are in the habit of using the words 
"genuine" and "authentic" as synonyms, and some- 
times even of attaching to the word "authentic" the 
popular sense of "true" or "credible," by which the 
whole argumentation is obscured. A book is to be 
called genuine, if it has remained in all material 
points the same as it was when it proceeded from its 
author. It is authentic, if it has proceeded at all from 
the person whose name it bears, or, where the name 
of the author was not assigned with certainty at the 
time of its origin, if it originated at the time and 
under the circumstances it professes to have done. A 
book may be genuine and authentic, and yet its con- 
tents may lack credibility. 

We propose, in the order named, to inquire into the 

genuineness, the authenticity, and the credibility of 

the Gospel records, and then to consider their inspired 

character. The object of Part I is to show that the 
J 11 



12 THE GOSPEL RECORDS: 

text of the four canonical Gospels has been preserved 
in its integrity — is genuine or uncorrupted. The in- 
vestigation into the genuineness or integrity of the 
inspired writings is legitimate and of great import- 
ance. For though we may have the most satisfactory 
proofs that they proceeded at first from the apostles 
or evangelists whose names they bear, they may have 
been so altered since that time as to convey to us very 
false information with regard to their original con- 
tents. It is admitted on all hands that the original 
manuscripts disappeared at a very early time, owing 
to the frailty of the material on which the apostles 
wrote, and to the frequent use which was made of 
them by being read in the Churches and constantly 
transcribed, and that, in common with all other an- 
cient writings, the original text of the New Testament 
has been exposed to the accidents to which all works 
preserved by transcription are liable. We will, there- 
fore, consider, first, the history of the text, as the Ger- 
man writers call it — that is, the changes to which the 
original was unavoidably subjected in the process of 
transcription — and then prove that all these changes 
have not impaired the integrity of the original. 



THEIR GENUINENESS. 13 



CHAPTER I. 

THE HISTORY OF THE TEXT. 

§ 2. The Change of the Original Text with regard to its 
Outward Appearance. 

Inasmuch as our present mode of publishing books 
is very different from that of ancient times, we can 
not but expect that the outward appearance of the 
original text underwent great changes by being tran- 
scribed from century to century, and a consideration 
of these external changes claims our attention first. 
The following points are of general interest : 

1. The authors of the Xew Testament used the 
charta — 6 yaprr^, 2 John, 12 — paper made of layers 
of the papyrus, a plant that was very common in 
Egypt. Of this paper there were, in the apostles' 
times, several kinds in use, differing from each other 
in strength and durability. Of the existing manu- 
scripts, however, none are written on papyrus, but on 
vellum or parchment and on paper of later origin. 
Yellum was the most durable, but also the most costly 
material. The manuscripts on paper are of a date 
posterior to the seventh century. 

2. As to the external form of the manuscripts, the 
ancients made use of rolls in their writings; yet as 
this form was unhandy in several respects, the custom 
arose to write on large sheets, which were folded up 
like maps in an atlas, four, five, six, or eight fold, of 
different sizes. This is the form of all manuscripts 
extant. 



14 THE GOSPEL RECORDS: 

3. The Greek manuscripts were mostly written with- 
out division of words, in capital letters — which, in the 
time of Jerome, were called uncials — till the ninth 
century, when the so-called cursive handwriting — that 
is, writing with small letters, and capitals only at the 
head of certain words — came into use, as requiring 
less space and being better adapted for fast writing. 
The separation of words from each other by a point 
or empty space did not become general before the 
ninth century. 

4. Punctuation marks were seldom used by the 
ancients. The numerous mistakes of the fathers, or 
their uncertainty, how particular passages were to be 
read and understood, clearly prove that there was no 
regular or accustomed system of punctuation in use 
in the fourth century. Toward the middle of the fifth 
century Euthalius, of Alexandria, wrote the Pauline 
epistles, and afterward the Gospels, stichometrically ; 
that is, in lines regulated by the sense, so that each 
terminated where some pause was to be made; when 
the line was not filled, the remainder was, at first, left 
empty, but afterward, in order to save space, it was 
filled up, and a point was made to indicate the pause. 
The lines of tbe books were generally numbered and 
the number marked at the end. Although some full 
points are to be found in the Codex Alexandrinus, the 
Codex Yaticanus, and the Codex Bezse — as they also 
are in inscriptions four hundred years before the 
Christian era — yet there is abundant evidence that 
our present system of Greek punctuation was not 
fully adopted before the ninth century. 

5. The same remarks apply to the accents, spiritus — 
breathings— and the so-called iota subscriptum. The 
accents were gradually introduced. Some of the oldest 



THEIR GENUINENESS. 15 

manuscripts have them, others not, and it is only to- 
ward the end of the tenth century that they became 
general. The rough breathing — spiritus asper — was 
anciently a full letter in the form of the Latin H, and 
so it is found on monuments — e. gr., Ho>=6t. After- 
ward the first half of the letter (I) was used for the 
rough breathing, and the other half (I) for the smooth 
breathing, and from these two signs the modern form 
of breathings (") arose. According to the oldest 
manuscripts, it seems that the writers of the New 
Testament did not use these two signs, at least not 
uniformly. The iota subscription was anciently writ- 
ten as a letter in the line — iota postscriptum — afterward 
entirely omitted, but came into general use as iota 
subscription with the introduction of the cursive char- 
acters. Whether a word was originally meant for 
aur-fi, &uttj, or avzrj, must be determined by the context 
alone. 

6. Our present division of the sacred text into chap- 
ters and verses is of still more recent date. The first 
general division was made in the thirteenth century, 
in all probability, by the Cardinal Hugo Carensis, and 
the latter by Eobert Stephanus in 1551, after a va- 
riety of other divisions had been in partial use before. 
Tertullian already speaks of capitula in portions of 
the New Testament Scriptures. But this division did 
neither extend over all the books of the New Testa- 
ment, nor was it in general use, as far as it went. In 
early use was the division into xe<pdXaca, portions much 
smaller than our chapters and larger than our verses. 
The Gospel of Matthew had 355 such ze<pdAata, that of 
Mark 234, that of Luke 341, that of John 231, alto- 
gether 1,162. This division was introduced by Am- 
monius, of Alexandria, in his Gospel Harmony — to 



16 THE GOSPEL RECORDS I 

tied T£<j<jdpu)v koyyihov — and afterward completed by 
Eusebius. A later division was that into rirloi — tituli — 
introduced in the fifth century. The Gospel of Mat- 
thew was divided into 68, that of Mark into 48, that 
of Luke into 83, and that of John into 18 such tituli. 
Our present division has, of course, no claims what- 
ever to the authority of the text, and being, in a 
number of instances, certainly faulty, the reader must 
take care not to be misled by it; yet, as it is in uni- 
versal use, and is of great advantage for the purpose 
of reference, it is not expedient to make a change. 
Besides the older divisions, which we have named, se- 
lections of the New Testament Scriptures — pericopce — 
were made for the public reading on each Sunday in 
the ecclesiastical year. The time and manner of their 
introduction are uncertain. Those from the Acts and 
the Epistles were probably first introduced by Eutha- 
lius; but those from the Gospels were undoubtedly 
earlier, at least in the Latin Church. These selections 
were often bound up separately, in their regular order, 
and are also of moment in Biblical criticism. 

7. The inscriptions or titles of the various books of 
the New Testament, it is generally admitted, were not 
originally written by the apostles, but were subse- 
quently added as the seal which the Church stamped 
upon them in settling the canon. The subscriptions 
annexed to some of the Epistles are manifestly spuri- 
ous. They are altogether wanting in some ancient 
manuscripts of the best note, and in others they are 
greatly varied. Some contain false assertions. 

£ 3. Some General Remarks on the Existing Manuscripts. 

1. The autographs — manuscripts of the New Testa- 
ment which were written either by the apostles them- 



THEIR GENUINENESS. 17 

selves or by amanuenses under their immediate in- 
spection, (Bom. xvi, 22; Gal. vi, 11; 2 Thess. iii, 17; 
1 Cor. xvi, 21,) have long since peiushed, and we have 
no information whatever concerning their history. It 
has been thought that Ignatius and Tertullian ap- 
pealed to them. Ignatius in his letter to the Phila- 
delphia's says that he heard some say: "If I do not 
find it & rots ap%aioiq, I do not believe it in the Gos- 
pel;" but ra apy^aia can here mean only the Old Test- 
ament writings, since the context shows, that the 
objection quoted came from Judaizers, who were un- 
willing to believe any thing in the Gospels that was 
not contained in the Old Testament. Tertullian ap- 
peals to the autenticce liter ce of the apostles as being 
read at his time in the Churches at Corinth, Philippi, 
Ephesus, etc. From this passage it might seem as 
if the autographs were referred to ; but from another 
passage in the same author it plainly appears, that 
not autographs, but correct copies of them, in the 
original language, made and preserved by the respect- 
ive Churches, were meant. If the autographs had 
existed at that time, the Church fathers would cer- 
tainly have appealed to them in their controversies 
with the heretics on the genuineness of disputed 
passages. 

2. No existing manuscript of the New Testament 
can be traced higher than the fourth century. The 
number of manuscripts that have thus far become 
known is about seven hundred. They belong to dif- 
ferent centuries, from the fifth, perhaps the fourth, 
down to the sixteenth, and are accordingly written in 
different characters, the oldest in uncials, by far the 
most in cursive letters, partly without, partly with 
divisions into words and sections, with or without 



18 THE GOSPEL RECORDS: 

accents, and with punctuation marks of different 
kinds. These very points, the shape of the letters, 
the material, and orthography furnish the principal 
data for determining the time and country, when and 
where the manuscripts were made. Sometimes other 
internal data are furnished by the manuscripts, giving, 
in a few instances, the name of the copyist and the 
year when the manuscript was made, or containing 
menologies, in which the festival days of the saints 
are mentioned, on which certain portions of Scripture 
are to be read in the Churches. As these menologies 
often designate such days as were celebrated in honor 
of certain saints from otherwise known dates, in cer- 
tain countries, they furnish important data for de- 
termining the time and place when and where the 
manuscript was made. 

3. Very few manuscripts contain the whole either 
of the Old or of the New Testament. By far the 
greater part — five hundred — have only the four Gos- 
pels, because they were most frequently read in the 
Churches; two hundred the Acts and catholic epis- 
tles; three hundred the Pauline epistles, and one 
hundred the Apocalypse. Almost all of them, es- 
pecially the more ancient manuscripts, are imperfect, 
either from the injuries of time or from neglect. All 
manuscripts, the most ancient not excepted, have era- 
sures and corrections; which, however, were not al- 
ways effected so dextrously but that the original 
writing may sometimes be seen. 

4. Before the invention of paper, the great scarcity 
of parchment in different places induced many per- 
sons to obliterate the works of ancient writers, in 
order to write in their place another work. Such 
manuscripts are termed Codices Palimpsesti or Be- 



THEIR GENUINENESS. 19 

scripti. In general, a Codex Bescriptus is easily known, 
as it rarely happens that the former writing is so com- 
pletely erased as not to exhibit some traces ; in a few 
instances both writings are legible. Very valuable 
discoveries have been made in these rewritten man- 
uscripts. 

5. Besides the manuscripts which contain the whole 
New Testament, or certain books of it in full, there 
are others which contain only the selections or peri- 
copce; they are called Codices Ecclesiastici or Lection- 
aria. These selections were often prefaced with some 
remarks respecting the day on which they were to be 
read, and such remarks have, in some instances, crept 
into the text. 

6. Some manuscripts have not only the Greek text, 
but are accompanied with a version, which is either 
interlined or in a parallel column ; these are called 
Codices Bilingues. The greatest number is in Greek 
and Latin; and the Latin version is, in general, one 
of those which existed before the time of Jerome. 

7. A comparative description of the different man- 
uscripts, and an account of the various critical methods 
adopted to arrange them in certain classes or families, 
can be of interest and profit only to the professional 
scholar, but does not lie within our scope, and is to 
be sought in the special works on Biblical Text Crit- 
icism. Yet a few words of explanation may be ex- 
pected by the general reader on the critical references 
of various readings, which he will find in the foot- 
notes of the text in the author's Commentary. The 
manuscripts in uncials have, since Wetstein, been 
designated with the cajrital letters of the Latin al- 
phabet, and where these do not suffice, with the Greek 
capitals; those in cursive characters — minuscles — 



20 THE GOSPEL RECORDS: 

with the common Arabic ciphers. But as the manu- 
scripts of both kinds — the uncial and cursive — are 
divided into four classes, namely, into codices, con- 
taining the Gospels, the Acts and catholic epistles, the 
Pauline epistles, and the Apocalypse, both the capital 
letters and ciphers commence in them four times 
anew. Thus, a codex, that contains the whole New 
Testament, comes up in the four classes with the cap- 
ital or cipher peculiar to each class. As these two 
marks, capitals and ciphers, often vary in the different 
classes in the same manuscripts, and as new docu- 
ments are constantly coming into the lists, it is neces- 
sary to notice — when they are simply quoted with 
their capitals or ciphers — to which book of the New 
Testament the quotations refer, in order to find them 
in the lists of the codices. 

§4 A Consideration of the Variety or Readings pre- 
sented by the Manuscripts of the New Testament. 

Alarming as it may appear to the simple, pious 
Christian, to be told of fifty thousand up to one 
hundred and fifty thousand different readings, as they 
have been variously estimated, in the books of the 
New Testament, and much as infidels have boasted 
of this discovery, a slight examination of the matter 
will not only completely remove all apprehensions, 
but furnish us with the most conclusive proof that 
Divine Providence has provided the very best security 
for the integrity of the documents, upon which our 
faith rests. 

In the first place, the number of various readings, 
great as it appears, is really less, in proportion, than 
that of the various readings extant in most classic 
authors, when compared with the quantity of text 



THEIR GENUINENESS. 21 

examined, and the number of manuscripts and other 
authorities collated in each particular case. Nineteen 
out of twenty, at least, are to be dismissed at once 
from consideration, because they are found in so few 
authorities, and their origin is so easily explained, 
that no critic would regard them as having any claim 
to be inserted in the text. Of those which remain, a 
very great majority are entirely unimportant. They 
consist in transpositions or omissions of letters, the use 
of different grammatical forms, the exchange of sy- 
nonymous words and transpositions of words in sen- 
tences ; and a very small number affects the sense of 
all. Only six passages have been discovered where a 
vital doctrine is affected by the different readings ; 
but even in these instances the doctrine itself is not 
periled, because it is plainly taught in other passages. 

The great value of the immense amount of labor, 
which has been expended for nearly a century upon 
the received text of the New Testament, consists not 
so much in the emendations of that text, as in estab- 
lishing the fact, that the original text has been trans- 
mitted to us with remarkable integrity, that far the 
greater part of the variations among different copies 
are of no authority or of no importance, and that some 
of them are so trifling as not to admit of being made 
apparent in a translation. 

The condition of the text, then, is such as we have 
to expect from the human agents through whom the 
documents were transmitted to posterity. The copy- 
ist was naturally exposed to mistakes of the eye by 
the unbroken current uncials — capitals; thus letters 
of similar form were interchanged, some words were 
omitted, others written twice, others transposed, and 
sometimes whole sentences were erroneously divided. 



22 THE GOSPEL RECORDS: 

Those who copied from dictation — a common prac- 
tice — were liable to errors by confounding sounds. 
Mistakes were also made, at a later period, by writing 
out abbreviations. Again, some words had been left 
out, and then were set as glosses in the margin ; the 
copyist wishing to restore the original text, inserted 
the gloss or glosses in the text, but often in the wrong 
place. Errors of this kind are more frequent in the 
manuscripts of the New Testament than in those of 
other ancient writings, because the former were more 
frequently copied than the latter, and there were, 
therefore, more intermediate links between the auto- 
graphs and the later copies. Other corruptions of 
the text arose from the efforts to correct it or make it 
plainer by removing the peculiarities of the New 
Testament diction, or by the reception of glosses into 
the text, which had at first been written in the mar- 
gin to explain a difficulty, especially in the synoptical 
Gospels. The higher the authority of these writings 
rose, the more natural became the desire of the later 
copyist to amend a supposed error of an earlier one. 
To have prevented such variations of the original 
text would have required such a continuous miracle 
on the part of God, as would not have been in accord- 
ance with God's dealings with man, nor consistent 
with the freedom of human agency. "They," says 
Dr. Hill, in his Lectures on Divinity, "who seem to 
think that the all-ruling providence of God should 
have preserved every copy of the original from any 
kind of vitiation, forget the extent of the miracle 
which they ask, when they demand, that all who ever 
were employed in copying the New Testament should 
at all times have been effectually guarded by the 
Spirit of God from negligence, and their works kept 



THEIR GENUINENESS. 23 

safe from the injuries of time. They forget, moreover, 
that the very circumstance to which they object has, 
in the wisdom of God, been highly favorable to the 
cause of truth. The infidel has enjoyed his triumph 
and has exposed his ignorance. Men of erudition 
have been encouraged to apply their talents to a sub- 
ject which opens so large a field for their exercise. 
Their research and their discoveries have demon- 
strated the futility of the objection, and have shown 
that the great body of the people in every country, 
who are incapable of such research, may safety rest 
in the Scriptures as they are, and that the most 
scrupulous critics, by the inexhaustible sources of cor- 
rection which lie open to them, may attain nearer to 
an absolute certainty with regard to the true reading 
of the books of the New Testament, than of any other 
ancient book in any language. If they require more, 
their demand is unreasonable; for the religion of 
Jesus does not profess to satisfy the careless, or to 
overpower the obstinate, but rests its pretensions 
upon evidence sufficient to bring conviction to those 
who with honest hearts inquire after the truth, and 
are willing to exercise their reason in attempting to 
discover it." 

The Church was at all times enabled to ascertain, 
in all essential points, the true text of the New Test- 
ament writings, by means of the great number of 
old manuscripts of the very ancient versions, which 
were made from copies much nearer the original man- 
uscripts than any that we have, and of the many 
quotations with which the works of the Christian 
fathers and other early writers abound. For a full 
description of these means, as well as for the rules in 
using them, the canons of criticism, which have been 



JW~ 



24 THE GOSPEL RECORDS: 

investigated and digested by many learned men, we 
must again refer the reader to the elaborate works 
that have been written on this subject. "We will 
only add, that it may please Divine Providence to 
bring to light ancient documents, not yet discovered, 
an instance of which we have had but a few years 
ago in the discovery of the Codex Sinaiticus, by 
Tischendorf. However that may be, with the appa- 
ratus and the clearly-ascertained principles of criti- 
cism which we possess now, we may confidently 
indulge the hope of recovering the original purity of 
the text, where it is yet obscured. With regard to 
the duty of the critical examination of the correct- 
ness of the received text, the eminent English com- 
mentator, Dr. Ellicott, makes, in the recently-pub- 
lished "Aids to Faith," the following remarks, which 
must commend themselves to every candid mind : 
"Let the interpreter be seduced by no timidity or 
prejudices from ascertaining the true text. Let him 
not fall back upon the too often repeated statement, 
that, as readings affect no great points of doctrine, 
the subject may be left in abeyance. It is, indeed, 
most true, that different readings of such a character 
as 1 Tim. iii, 16, or interpolations such as 1 John v, 
7, are few and exceptional. It is, indeed, a cause for 
devout thankfulness, that out of the vast number of 
various readings so few affect vital questions; still 
it is indisputably a fact, that but few pages of the 
New Testament can be turned over without our find- 
ing points of the greatest interest affected by very 
trivial variations of reading. On the presence or 
absence of an article in John v, 1, the whole chro- 
nology of our Lord's ministerial life may be said 
almost entirely to depend. A very slight alteration in 



THEIR GEXCIXEXESS. 25 

Hark viij 31. would indicate a fact of deep historical 
interest, and is of very great significance in reference 
alike to commands subsequently given to the apos- 
tles to preach the Gospel, and to former prohibitions. 
(Matt. x. 5.) The absence of two words in Eph. i — 
now rendered somewhat more probable by the testi- 
mony of the Codex Sinaiticus — gives a fresh aspect 
to an important Epistle, disposes at once of several 
prima facie difficulties, and. further, must be taken 
greatly into account in the adjustment of some sub- 
ordinate, but interesting questions with which the 
Epistle has been thought to stand in connection. 
(Col. iv, 16.) The presence or absence of a few words 
in Matt, xxviii, 9, affects considerably our ability to 
remove one of the many seeming discrepancies in the 
narratives of the first hours of the morn of the res- 
urrection. We could multiply such examples ; but 
perhaps enough has been said. There are, indeed, 
several grounds for thinking that there is an improved 
feeling on the whole subject; and there seem some 
reasons for hoping that, though no authoritative re- 
vision is likely to take place, nor, at jDresent. perhaps, 
even to be desired, vet that the time is coming when 
there will be a considerable agreement on many of 
the results of modern criticism." 

3 



26 THE GOSPEL RECORDS I 



CHAPTER II. 

IMPOSSIBILITY OF SUCCESS IN AN ESSENTIAL MUTILA- 
TION OR CORRUPTION OF THE GOSPEL RECORDS. 

We have seen that there is nothing in the various 
readings to shake our faith in the integrity of the 
sacred text. On the contrary, the very disagreement 
of the manuscripts shows that there could have been 
no collusion; but that the manuscripts were written, 
independently of each other, by persons separated by 
distance of time, remoteness of place, and diversity 
of opinion. This extensive independency of manu- 
scripts on each other is the effectual check of willful 
alteration; which, whenever attempted, must have 
been immediately corrected by the agreement of 
copies from various and distant regions out of the 
reach of the interpolator. We are aware that we here 
enter upon an argumentation, where the question of 
genuineness coincides with that of authenticity. This, 
however, does not militate against the distinction 
which we have made between the two terms. We 
may use an argument for the genuineness of the 
Gospel Records, though it may also apply to their 
authenticity, and in doing so we furnish the reader 
with a natural transition and proper introduction to 
Part II. 

The arguments which prove the Gospel Records to 
have remained uncorrupted have been set forth with 
peculiar force and clearness by Prof. A. Norton, in 
his "Evidences of the Genuineness of the Gospels," a 



THEIR GENUINENESS. 27 

work truly classic, but so learned and expensive as 
to be found only in the library of the professional 
scholar, and unadapted for general circulation in the 
orthodox Churches on account of the theological 
stand-point which the author occupies as a Unitarian. 
Yet the manner in which he presents the arguments 
on the un corrupted preservation of the Gospel Eecords 
is unsurpassed, and we can do our readers no better 
service than to give them in his own language, 
though in a condensed form and separated from those 
arguments that bear only on the authenticity of the 
records, which the author does not sufficiently dis- 
tinguish from genuineness in the strict sense in which 
we have defined this word. 

§ 5. Argument from the Agreement of the Respective Copies 
of the Four Gospels. 

That the Gospels have not been corrupted, but have 
remained essentially the same as they were originally 
composed, appears, in the first place, from the agree- 
ment among our present manuscript copies. These 
were written in different countries, and at different 
periods. They have been found in places widely re- 
mote from each other; in Asia, in Africa, and from 
one extremity of Europe to the other. Besides these 
manuscripts of the Greek text there are many man- 
uscripts of ancient versions of the Gospels in different 
languages of each of the three great divisions of the 
world just mentioned. There are, likewise, many 
manuscripts of the works of the Christian Fathers 
abounding in quotations from the Gospels; and es- 
pecially manuscripts of ancient commentaries on the 
Gospels, such as those of Origen, who lived in the 
third century, and of Chrysostom, who lived in the 



28 THE GOSPEL RECORDS: 

fourth ; in which we find the sacred text quoted, as 
the different portions of it are successively the sub- 
jects of remark. 

Now, all these different copies of the Gospels, or 
parts of the Gospels, so numerous, so various in their 
character, so unconnected, offering themselves to no- 
tice in parts of the world so remote from each other, 
concur in giving us essentially the same text. They 
vary, indeed, more or less from each other ; but their 
variations have arisen from the common accidents of 
transcription; or, as regards the versions, partly from 
errors of translations ; or in respect to the quotations 
by the Fathers, from the circumstance, that in ancient 
as in modern times the language of Scripture was 
often cited without regard to verbal accuracy, in 
cases where no particular verbal accuracy was re- 
quired. The agreement among the extant copies of 
any one of the Gospels, or of portions of it, is essen- 
tial; the disagreements are accidental and trifling, 
originating in causes which, from the nature of things, 
we know must have been in operation. The same 
work every -where appears ; and, by comparing to- 
gether different copies, we are able to ascertain the 
original text to a great degree of exactness. Eut as 
these professed copies thus correspond with each 
other, it follows that they must all be derived from 
one original manuscript, and that such manuscript 
has been faithfully copied. 

Let us now consider the supposition that one tran- 
scriber, in one part of the world, would have made 
certain alterations in his copy, and inserted certain 
narratives which he had collected; and another, in 
another place, would have made different alterations, 
and inserted different narratives. Such cojMes, upon 



THEIR GENUINENESS. 29 

the supposition that this imagined license continued, 
would, when again transcribed, have been again 
changed and enlarged. Copies would have been con- 
tinually multiplying, diverging more and more from 
the original and from each other. Ko generally-re- 
ceived text would have existed; none, therefore, could 
have been preserved and handed down. Instead of 
that agreement among the copies of each Gospel 
which now exists, we should have found everv-where 
manuscripts, presenting us with different collections 
of narratives and sayings, and differing, at the same 
time, in their arrangement of the same facts and in 
their general style of expression. The copies of these 
writings would have presented the same phenomena 
as those of some of the apocryphal books, as, for in- 
stance, that called the Gospel of the Infancy, which 
appears in several different forms, this collection of 
fables having been remodeled by one after another 
according to his fancy. It is, moreover, to be taken 
into consideration, that the transcriber of a manu- 
script, making such alterations as the hypothesis 
supposes, could by doing so not corrupt the work it- 
self. His copy could have had no influence upon the 
numerous cotemporary copies in which the true text 
might be preserved, or into which different altera- 
tions might be introduced. It is quite otherwise 
since the invention of printing. He who now intro- 
duces a corruption into the printed edition of a work, 
introduces it into all the copies of that edition; and 
if it be the only edition, into all the copies of that 
work. 

It is evident, from the preceding statements, that 
the existing copies of each of the Gospels have been 
derived from some common exemplar, faithfully fol- 



30 THE GOSPEL RECORDS : 

lowed by transcribers. But it may be said that this 
exemplar was not the original work, as it proceeded 
from the hand of the Evangelist; that the lineage of 
our present copies is not to be traced so high ; but 
that, at some period, the course of corruption which 
has been described was arrested, and a standard text 
was selected and determined upon, which has served 
as an archetype for all existing copies, but that this 
text, thus fixed as the standard, had already suffered 
greatly from the corruptions of transcribers, and was 
very different from the original. According to Eich- 
horn, the Church selected, at the end of the second 
and the beginning of the third century, out of the 
many Gospels then extant, four, which had the great- 
est marks of credibility and the necessary complete- 
ness for common use, and labored to procure their 
general reception among Christians, with the sup- 
pression of all other Gospels. In order properly to 
judge of this supposition, let us first inquire whether, 
at the time named, "the Church" had the power to 
do what is ascribed to her. There was no single 
ecclesiastical government which extended over Chris- 
tians, or over a majority of Christians, or over any 
considerable portion of their number. They had no 
regular modes of acting in concert, nor any effectual 
means whatever of combining together for a com- 
mon purpose. Neither the whole body, nor a major- 
ity of Christians, ever met by delegation to devise 
common measures. Such an event did not take place 
till a hundred and twenty years after the end of the 
second century, when Christianity had become the 
established religion of the Eoman Empire, and the 
first general council, that of Nice, was called together 
by the Emperor Constantine. At the time of which 



THEIR GENUINENESS. 31 

we are speaking, the Christians were disturbed and 
unsettled by frequent cruel persecutions. Exclusively 
of those generally considered heretics, they were 
alienated from each other by differences of religious 
opinion ; for it was before the end of the second 
century that Victor, Bishop of Borne, had excommu- 
nicated the Eastern Churches. This was the state of 
the Church at the end of the second century, and yet 
it is supposed that she came to an agreement to se- 
lect four out of the many manuscript Gospels then 
in existence, all of which had been exposed to the 
license of transcribers. Of these four no traces are 
said to be discovered before that time ; but it was 
determined to adopt them for common use, to the 
prejudice, it would seem, of others longer known. 
There was, as it is supposed, a universal and silent 
compliance with this proposal. Copies of the four 
new manuscripts and translations of them were at 
once circulated through the world. All others ceased 
to be transcribed, and suddenly disappeared from 
common notice. Copyers were at the same time 
checked in their former practice of licentious altera- 
tion. Thus a revolution was effected in regard to the 
most important sacred books of the Christians, and 
at the same time better habits were introduced among 
the transcribers of those books. 

Now, who can suppose that any such series of 
events took place at the end of the second century? 
It is intrinsically incredible. Let us consider for a 
moment what an effort would be required, and what 
resistance must be overcome, in order to bring into 
general use among a single nation of Christians at 
the present day, not other Gospels, but simply a new 
and better translation of our present Gospels. In 



32 TEE GOSPEL RECORDS : 

the case under consideration, allowing the supposed 
change to have been possible, it must have met with 
great opposition ; it must have provoked much dis- 
cussion : there must have been a great deal written 
about it at the time; it must have been often referred 
to afterward, especially in the religious controversies 
which took place; it would have been one of the 
most important events in the history of Christians, 
and the account of the transaction must have been 
preserved. That there are no traces of it whatever 
is alone conclusive evidence that it never took place. 
Lastly : our present Gospels, it is conceded, were 
in common use among Christians about the end of 
the second century. The number of manuscripts 
then in existence bore some proj>ortion to the num- 
ber of Christians. The number of Christians can be 
safely set down at three millions. As few possessions 
could have been valued by a Christian so highly as 
a copy of the records of that Gospel, for which he 
was exposing himself to the severest sacrifices, and 
as a common copy of the Gospels could not have 
been very expensive, to judge from a remark of Ju- 
venal respecting the cost of books in ancient times, 
there can be little doubt that copies of the Gospels 
were owned hy a large portion of Christians; and, 
in supposing one copy for every fifty Christians, the 
estimate is probably much within the truth. This 
proportion would give us sixty thousand copies of 
the Gospels for three millions of Christians. But 
whether more or less, if there had been important 
discrepancies among the large number of copies, in 
common use and dispersed over the world, no series 
of events could either have destroyed, the evidence 
of these discrepancies or could have produced the 



THEIR GENUINENESS. 33 

present agreement among existing copies, derived, as 
they are. from those in use at the period in question. 
The agreement, then, at the end of the second cen- 
tury, among the numerous copies of the respective 
Gospels, proves that an archetype of each Gospel 
had been faithfully followed by the transcribers. 
This archetype, as we have seen, there is no ground 
for imagining to have been any other than the orig- 
inal work of the author of that Gospel. It follows, 
therefore, that in the interval between the composi- 
tion of these works and the end of the second cen- 
tury, their text did not suffer, as has been fancied, 
from the licentiousness of transcribers. 

§ 6. Arguments Drawx from Other Considerations. 

1. It would have been inconsistent with the com- 
mon sentiments and practice of mankind for tran- 
scribers to make such alterations and additions as 
have been imagined in the sacred books *which they 
were copying. Such license has never been attrib- 
uted to the transcribers of the ancient classics, and 
what we apprehend so little concerning other writ- 
ings, is still less to be apprehended concerning the 
Gospels, on account of their sacred character. Let 
us adduce a few testimonies in proof of this fact, 
and in refutation of the assertion made by Eichhorn, 
that. •• before the invention of printing, in transcrib- 
ing a manuscript, the most arbitrary alterations were 
considered as allowable, since they affected only an 
article of private proj)erty, written for the use of an 
individual." 

Justin Martyr, in the dialogue which he represents 
himself as having held with Trypho, an unbelieving 



34 THE GOSPEL RECORDS: 

Jew, charges the Jews with having expunged certain 
passages of the Old Testament relating to Christ. 
To this Trypho answers that the charge seems to 
him incredible. Justin replies, " It does seem in- 
credible ; for to mutilate the Scriptures would be a 
more fearful crime than the worship of the golden 
calf, or than the sacrifice of children to demons, or 
than slaying the prophets themselves." Is it credible 
that, when such sentiments existed with regard to 
the heinousness of attempting an adulteration of the 
Old Testament writings, the Christian Churches would 
suffer a tampering with their own sacred books ? 

Some of the heretics in the second century made, 
or were charged with making, alterations in the 
Christian Scriptures, in order to accommodate them 
to their own opinions. Of such corruptions of 
Scripture Dionysius, who was Bishop of Corinth 
about the year 170, thus speaks: "I have written 
epistles at the desire of the brethren. But the 
apostles of the devil have filled them with darnel, 
taking out some things and adding others. Against 
such a woe is denounced. It is not wonderful, there- 
fore, that some have undertaken to corrupt the 
Scriptures of the Lord, since they have corrupted 
writings not to be compared with them." The 
meaning of Dionysius is, that the persons spoken of 
having shown their readiness to commit such a crime, 
it was not strange that they should even corrupt the 
Scriptures, these being works of much higher author- 
ity than his epistles, and from the falsification of 
which more advantage was to be gained. From the 
manner in which Dionysius denounces the guilt of 
some "apostles of the devil," in corrupting the Scrip- 
tures, we may confidently infer that the Christian 



THEIR GENUINENESS. 35 

Churches were not guilty of such a practice. And 
yet this very passage of Dionysius is quoted by 
Eichhorn in support of his supposition. Equally 
groundless is his appeal to a saying of Celsus. 
"Celsus," says he, "objects to the Christians that 
they had changed their Gospels three and four times 
and oftener, as if they were deprived of their senses." 
Tf the charge of Celsus were correctly represented, 
the first obvious answer would be, that such a charge 
is as little to be credited, upon the mere assertion of 
Celsus, as various other calumnies of that writer 
against the Christians, which no one at the present 
day believes. But Celsus does not say what he is 
represented as saying. He does not bring the charge 
against the Christians generally, but against some 
Christians. His words are preserved in the work 
composed by Origen, in reply to Celsus; and, cor- 
rectly rendered, are as follows: "Afterward Celsus 
says, that some believers, like men driven by drunk- 
enness to commit violence on themselves, have altered 
the Gospel history, since its first composition, three 
times, four times, and often er, and have refashioned 
it, so as to be able to deny the objections made 
against it." To this the whole reply of Origen is as 
follows : " I know of none who have altered the Gos- 
pel history, except the followers of Marcion, of Val- 
entinus, and I think also those of Lucan. But this 
affords no ground for reproach against the religion 
itself, but against those who have dared to corrupt 
the Gospels. And as it is no reproach against phi- 
losophy that there are Sophists, or Epicureans, or 
Peripatetics, or any others, who hold false opinions, 
bo also it is no reproach against true Christianity that 
there are those who have altered the Gospels and in- 



36 THE GOSPEL RECORDS I 

troduced heresies foreign from the teaching of Jesus." 
It is evident that Origen regarded the words of Cel- 
sus not as a grave charge against the whole body of 
Christians, but as a mere declamatory accusation, 
which he was not called upon to repel by any elab- 
orate reply. Celsus compares the conduct of those 
whom he charges with altering the Gospels to that 
of men impelled by drunkenness to commit violence 
on themselves. To this comparison no objectien is to 
be made; for the question, whether the early Chris- 
tians altered the Gospels, really resolves itself into 
the question, whether they acted like men intoxicated 
to the evident ruin of their cause. 

To return, then, to the positive testimonies against 
the supposition of a corruption of the Gospel Records 
having been suffered by the Christian Churches — "we 
have not received," says Irenseus, (contra Hser., 1. ii, 
c. 1,) "the knowledge of the way of our salvation by 
any others than those through whom the Gospel has 
come down to us, which Gospel they first preached, 
and afterward, by the will of God, transmitted to us 
in writing, that it might be the foundation and pillar 
of our faith." He immediately proceeds to speak 
particularly of the composition of the four Gospels, 
referring them to the authors to whom they are com- 
monly ascribed. These books he afterward repre- 
sents as the most important books of Scripture, (lb., 
1. iii, c. 11, § 8,) and the Scriptures he calls "oracles 
of God." (lb., 1. i, c. 8, § 1.) He says, "We know 
that the Scriptures are perfect, as dictated by the 
Logos of God and his Spirit." (lb., 1. ii, c. 28, § 2.) 

Clement, of Alexandria, also calls the Scriptures 
divinely inspired, and speaks of the four Gospels, in 
contradistinction from all other accounts of Christ, as 



THEIR GENUINENESS. 37 

having been handed down to the Christians of his 
age. (Stromat., 1. iii, § 13.) Tertullian manifests the 
same reverence for the Scriptures, and especially for 
the Gospels, as his cotemporaries, Irenseus and Clem- 
ent. He, like them, quotes the Gospels as works of 
decisive authority, in the same manner as any mod- 
ern theologian might do. He wrote much against 
the heretic Marcion, whom he charges with having 
rejected the other Gospels, and having mutilated the 
Gospel of Luke, to conform it to his system. This 
leads him to make some statements which have a 
direct bearing on the present subject. " I affirm," 
says Tertullian, " that not only in the Churches 
founded by apostles, but in all which have fellow- 
ship with them, that Gospel of Luke, which we so 
steadfastly defend, has been received from its first 
publication." '-The same authority," he adds, " of 
the apostolic Churches will support the other Gos- 
pels, which, in like manner, we have from them, con- 
formably to their copies." (Adv. Marcion, 1. iv, § 5.) 
u They," he says, " who were resolved to teach other- 
wise than the truth, were under a necessity of new 
nodding the records of the doctrine." "As they 
could not have succeeded in corrupting the doctrine 
without corrupting its records, so we could not have 
preserved and transmitted the doctrine in its integ- 
rity, but by preserving the integrity of its records." 
(De Prseser. Haeret., § 28.) 

The passages quoted show the state of opinion and 
feeling among Christians during the first two centu- 
ries, and it is clear that those who entertained these 
sentiments would neither make nor permit inten- 
tional alterations in the Gospels. 

2. About the close of the second century, different 



38 THE GOSPEL RECORDS : 

Christian writers express strong censure of the muti- 
lations and changes which they charge some heretics, 
particularly Marcion, with having made in the Gos- 
pels and other books of the New Testament. Some 
passages to this effect have been quoted ; it is unnec- 
essary to adduce others, because the fact is well 
known and universally admitted. But if our Gos- 
pels had not existed in their present form till the 
close of the second century, if before that time their 
text had been fluctuating, and assuming in different 
copies a different form, such as transcribers might 
choose to give it, those by whom they were used 
could not have ventured to speak with such confi- 
dence of the alterations of the heretics. 

3. We happen to have, in the words of a single 
writer, decisive evidence that no such differences as 
would imply a mutilation or corruption of the text 
ever existed in the manuscripts of the canonical Gos- 
pels. Origen was born A. D. 185, and flourished 
during the first half of the third century. He was 
particularly skilled in the criticism of the Scriptures. 
He had the means of consulting various manuscripts 
of the Gospels, of which he made a critical use, notic- 
ing their various readings. His notices are princi- 
pally found in his Commentaries on the Gospels. If 
transcribers had indulged in such licentious altera- 
tions as have been supposed, he could not have been 
ignorant of them. But the various readings he ad- 
duces give a convincing proof that the manuscripts 
of his time differed, to say the least, as little from 
each other as the manuscripts now extant, and, con- 
sequently, that before his time there was the same 
care to preserve the original text as there has been 
since. This conviction is not weakened by a passage 



THEIR GENUINENESS. 39 

in his writings, which may seem at first view to favor 
the opposite opinion. Origen expresses his doubts 
in the genuineness of the words, " Thou shalt love 
thy neighbor as thyself," (Matt, xix, 19,) and says: 
"But if it were not that in many other passages there 
is a difference among copies, so that all those of the 
Gospel of Matthew do not agree together, and so also 
as it regards the other Gospels, it might well seem 
irreverent in any one to suspect that the precept has 
been inserted here without its having been mentioned 
by the Savior. But it is evident that there exists 
much difference among copies; partly from the care- 
lessness of some transcribers, partly from the rash- 
ness of others in altering improperly what they find 
written, and partly from those revisers who add or 
strike out according to their own judgment." (Com. 
in Matt., torn, xv, § 14.) In this passage there is no 
reference to the intentional corruptions of the here- 
tics, in which case another Greek word would have 
been used for "altering" and for "revisers;" it refers 
only to the well-known, common causes of error in 
the transcription of manuscripts. We learn from it 
that transcribers were sometimes careless ; that they 
sometimes improperly altered from conjecture a read- 
ing in the copy before them, which they fancied to 
be erroneous ; and that those whose business was to 
revise manuscripts after transcription, for the purpose 
of correcting errors, did sometimes, in the want of 
proper critical apparatus, rely too much upon their 
mere judgment concerning what was probably the 
true text. His language in speaking of the differ- 
ence among the manuscripts is even not as strong as 
that used by some modern critics concerning the dis- 
agreement among our present copies, which we know 



40 THE GOSPEL RECORDS : 

does not involve any essential mutilation or corrup- 
tion. The passage of Ori gen, then, shows, on the one 
hand, that he did not regard the Gospels as having 
been exposed to any other causes of error than those 
common in the transcription of manuscripts ; on the 
other hand, that he had no disposition to keep out of 
view or to extenuate the differences among the cop- 
ies extant in his time. We may, therefore, be satis- 
fied that none of more importance existed than what 
we find noticed by him. 

"We may reason in a similar manner from all the 
notices in ancient writers relating to the text of the 
Gospels. Nothing can be alleged from their writings 
to prove any greater difference among the copies ex- 
tant in their time than what is found among those 
which we now possess. It may here be proper to 
refer to an objection which Eichhorn makes. He 
says: " Clement, of Alexandria, at the end of the 
second century, speaks of those who corrupted the 
Gospels, and ascribes it to them; that at Matthew v, 
10, instead of the words, 'for theirs is the kingdom of 
heaven,' there was found in some manuscripts, 'for 
they shall be perfect ;' and in others, 'for they shall 
have a place where they shall not be persecuted.'' " This 
statement is erroneous. Clement does not speak of 
those who corrupted, but of those who paraphrased 
the Gospels; nor does he give the words alleged by 
him, as various readings in manuscripts of the Gos- 
pels. Quoting the original text incorrectly, from 
memory, in these words, " blessed are they who are 
persecuted for righteousness' sake, for they shall be 
called the sons of God," he adds, "or as some, who 
have paraphrased the Gospels, express it : Blessed 
are they who are persecuted for righteousness' sake, 



THEIR GENUINENESS. 41 

for they shall be perfect; and blessed are they who 
are persecuted for my sake, for they shall attain a 
place where they shall not be persecuted." Clement 
evidently expresses no indignation against those of 
whom he speaks, as he would have done if the pas- 
sages quoted had assumed three such different forms 
in the manuscripts which he had seen ; for that 
would prove a general license of corruption in his 
time. 

4. If our present Gospels had been the result of 
successive additions, made by different hands to a 
common basis, there would have been a marked di- 
versity of style in different portions of the same 
Gospel, so that these works would have been very 
unlike what they are now. AVe should have per- 
ceived clear traces of different writers, having greater 
or less command of expression, and accustomed to a 
different use of language. But when we examine the 
Gospels, there is nothing which discovers marks of 
their having been subjected to such a process of in- 
terpolation. On the contrary, there is decisive evi- 
dence that each is the work of an individual, and 
has been preserved, as it was written by him. The 
dialect, the style, and the modes of narration in the 
Gospels, generally, have a very marked and j)eculiar 
character. Each Gospel, also, is distinguished from 
the others by individual peculiarities in the use of 
language, and other characteristics exclusively its 
own. 

5. In those cases in which we have good reason to 
suspect an ancient writing of being spurious alto- 
gether, or of having received spurious additions, the 
fact is almost always betrayed by something in the 
character of the writing itself. Spurious works and 



42 THE GOSPEL RECORDS. 

interpolations in authentic works are discovered by 
something not congruous to the character of the pre- 
tended author, by a style different from his own, by 
an implied reference to opinions or events of a later 
age, or by some other bearing and purpose not con- 
sistent with the time when they are pretended to 
have been written. Traces of the times when they 
were really composed are almost always apparent. 
This must have been the case with the Gospels if 
they had been subjected to alterations and additions 
from different editors and transcribers with different 
views and feelings, more or less affected by opinions 
and circumstances which had sprung up in their own 
times. But no traces of a later age than that which 
we assign for their composition appear in the Gospels. 



PAET II. 
THE AUTHENTICITY OF THE GOSPEL RECORDS. 



PART II. 

THE AUTHENTICITY OE THE GOSPEL RECORDS. 



§7. INTRODUCTORY REMARKS. 

By the authenticity of the Gospels we understand 
that they were written by the men whose names they bear, 
who were partly eye-witnesses, partly persons cotempora- 
neous with the events narrated. To declare the Gospels 
authentic in this sense has been pronounced by infi- 
dels to be "an assumption originating from the titles 
which the Biblical books bear in our canon." We 
grant that little reliance can be placed on these titles 
or headings, but it is absurd to say that these head- 
ings originated the belief that the books were writ- 
ten by the men whose names they bear ; for before 
the titles were attached, the belief must have ex- 
isted. There is not the slightest pretense for insinu- 
ating that there was ever any doubt as to the author- 
ship of any one of the historical books of the New 
Testament; which are as uniformly ascribed to the 
writers whose names they bear as the "Return of 
the Ten Thousand" to Xenophon, or the "Lives of 
the Csesars" to Suetonius. There is, indeed, far 
more and stronger testimony concerning the authen- 
ticity of the four Gospels than exists with respect to 

45 



46 THE GOSPEL RECORDS: 

the works of almost any classical writer ; for it is a 
rare occurrence for classical works to be distinctly 
quoted, or for their authors to be mentioned by name 
within a century of the time of their publication. 



THEIR AUTHENTICITY. 47 



CHAPTER I. 

THE OUTWARD HISTORICAL TESTIMONIES. 

§ 8. The Testimony of the Apostolical Fathers. 

By the Apostolical Fathers we understand those 
early Christian writers who lived wholly or in part 
in the very age of the apostles, and were more or 
less conversant with them. These are : Clement, of 
Rome, mentioned (Phil, iv, 3) as a fellow-laborer of 
Paul, afterward Bishop of Rome ; Barnabas, of Cy- 
prus, frequently mentioned in the New Testament as 
a co-laborer of Paul ; Ignatius, Bishop of Antioch in 
Syria ; Poly carp, a disci pie of John, ordained by him 
Bishop of Smyrna, where he died a martyr. Of 
these Apostolical Fathers we have only a few writ- 
ings and some fragments. 

The learned Dr. Lardner has carefully collated all 
the passages in which these writers have made any 
allusion to the canonical books of the New Testa- 
ment. Their allusions to the Epistles are far more 
numerous and direct than those to the Gospels. The 
latter have been subjected by Eichhorn and others 
to a very rigid scrutiny, for the purpose of destroy- 
ing the evidence they furnish that our Gospels were 
known to the Apostolical Fathers. It is said, that 
"by far the greater part of them are so general in 
the allusions they are supposed to make to passages 
occurring in the Gospels, that no weight can be at- 
tached to them." To this it might be sufficient to 



48 THE GOSPEL RECORDS: 

reply, that the very peculiarity of these allusions, 
instead of invalidating the evidence, furnishes a very 
strong argument in favor of the existence of the 
Gospels in their day. "When does an author," says 
Dr. W. L. Alexander, in his Christ and Christianity r , 
" feel himself at liberty to deal in general allusions 
to other writings, and, instead of formally citing them, 
to invigorate his own style, or point his own sen- 
tences, by a few words borrowed from them, or a 
passing hint at something they contain ? Is it not 
when he may safely take for granted the familiarity 
of his readers with the authors he thus passingly 
lauds? and does not this feature in the writings of 
any author invariably prompt the inference, that he 
has assumed the fact of such familiarity? . . . 

What confirms this inference is, that exactly in the 
same way of general allusion and partial citation do 
these Apostolic Fathers frequently make use of the 
writings of the Old Testament and of the Epistles of 
the New." 

It is true, that with the exception of the direct 
appeals to Paul's Epistles to the Corinthians, Ephe- 
sians, and Philippians, by Clement, Ignatius, and 
Polycarp, the Apostolic Fathers bear no formal testi- 
mony of the existence of the canonical books of the 
New Testament; but their indirect testimony is suf- 
ficiently strong to satisfy every reasonable demand. 
How fully it accords with the very nature of their 
position is very clearly set forth by Westcott, in his 
excellent work on the Canon of the New Testament, 
from which we shall draw most of what we have to 
say in this whole chapter. 

- "That the Apostolical Fathers," he says, "do not 
appeal to the Apostolic Writings more frequently 



THEIR AUTHENTICITY. 49 

and more distinctly, springs from the very nature of 
Iheir position. Those who had heard the living voice 
of apostles were unlikely to appeal to their written 
words. It is an instinct which always makes us pre- 
fer any personal connection to the more remote rela- 
tionship of books The words of Scripture 

are inwrought into the texture of the books, and not 
parceled out into formal quotations. They are not 
arranged with augmentative effect, but used as the 
natural expression of Christian truths. Now, this 
use of the Holy Scripture shows at least that they 
were even then widely known, and so guarded by a 
host of witnesses — that their language was trans- 
ferred into the common dialect — that it was as famil- 
iar to those first Christians as to us, who use it as 
unconsciously as they did in writing or conversation. 
If the quotations of the Old Testament in the Apos- 
tolic Fathers were uniformly explicit and exact, this 
mode of argument would lose much of its force. 
With the exception of Barnabas, it does not appear 
that they have made a single reference by name to 
any one of the books of the Old Testament. Clem- 
ent uses the general formula, ' It is written,' or, even 
more frequently, ' G-od saith,' or, simply, ' One saith/ 
The two quotations from the Old Testament in Igna- 
tius are simply preceded by < It is written.' Exact- 
ness of quotation was foreign to the spirit of their 
writing." 

Eespecting the coincidences between the Apostolic 
Fathers and the canonical Gospels, in particular, Mr. 
"Westcott says : " From the nature of the case, casual 
coincidences of language can not be brought forward 
in the same manner to prove the use of a history 
as of a letter. The same facts and words, especially 



50 THE GOSPEL RECORDS: 

if they be recent and striking, may be preserved in 
several narratives. References in the sub-apostolic 
age to the discourses or actions of our Lord, as we 
find them recorded in the Gospels, show that what 
they relate was then so far held to be true ; but it 
does not necessarily follow that they were already in 
use, and the precise source of the passage in question. 
On the contrary, the mode in which Clement refers 
to our Lord's teaching, 'the Lord said,' not ' saith,' 
seems to imply that he referred to tradition, and not 
to any written accounts, for words most closely re- 
sembling those which are still found in our Gospels. 
The testimony of the Apostolic Fathers is to the 
substance, and not to the authenticity of the Gospels. 
And in this respect they have an important work to 
do. They witness that the great outlines of the life 
and teachings of our Lord were familiarly known to 
all from the first : they prove that Christianity rests 
truly on a historic basis. The ' Gospel ' which the 
Fathers announce includes all the articles of the an- 
cient creeds. * Christ,' we read, c our God, the eternal 
Word, the Lord and Creator of the world, who was 
with the Father before time began, at the end hum- 
bled himself, and came down from heaven, and was 
manifested in the flesh, and was born of the Virgin 
Mary, of the race of David, according to the flesh ; 
and a star of exceeding brightness appeared at his 
birth. Afterward, he was baptized by John, to fulfill 
all righteousness; and then, speaking his Father's 
message, he invited not the righteous, but sinners, to 
come to him. At length, under Herod and Pontius 
Pilate, he was crucified, and vinegar and gall was of- 
fered him to drink. But on the first day of the week 
he rose from the dead, the first-fruits of the grave; 



THEIR AUTHENTICITY. 51 

and main' prophets were raised by him for whom they 
had waited.. After his resurrection he ate with his 
disciples, and showed them that he was not an incor- 
poreal spirit. And he ascended into heaven, and sat 
down on the right hand of the Father, and thence he 
shall come to judge the quick and the dead.' Such, 
in their own words, is the testimony of the earliest 
Fathers to the life of the Savior. Bound these facts 
their doctrines are grouped ; on the truth of the in- 
carnation, and the passion, and the resurrection of 
Christ, their hopes were grounded." 

3Ir. TTesteott, in conclusion, makes the following 
remarks on the age of the Apostolic Fathers: "If 
the extent of the evidence of the Apostolic Fathers 
to the books of the New Testament is exactly what 
might be expected from men who had seen the 
apostles, who had heard them, and who had treas- 
ured up their writings as the genuine records of their 
teaching, the character of their evidence is equally in 
accordance with their peculiar position. It will be 
readily seen that we can not expect to find the ~New 
Testament quoted in the first age as authoritative, in 
the same manner as the Old Testament. There could 
not, indeed, be any occasion for an appeal to the tes- 
timony of the Gospels, when the history of the faith 
was still within the memory of many ; and most of 
the epistles were of little use in controversy, for the 
earliest heretics denied the apostleship of St. Paul. 
The Old Testament, on the contrary, was common 
ground ; and the ancient system of Biblical inter- 
pretation furnished the Christian with ready arms. 
When these failed it was enough for him to appeal 
to the death and resurrection of Christ, which were 
at once the sum and the proof of his faith. 



52 THE GOSPEL RECORDS : 

The successors of the apostles did not, we admit, 
recognize that the written histories of the Lord, and 
the scattered epistles of his first disciples, would form 
a sure and sufficient source and test of doctrine, when 
the current tradition had grown indistinct or cor- 
rupt. Conscious of a life in the Christian body, and 
realizing the power of its Head, as later ages can not 
do, they did not feel that the apostles were provi- 
dentially charged to express once for all in their 
writings the essential forms of Christianity, even as 

the prophets had foreshadowed them But 

they had certainly an indistinct sense that their 
work was essentially different from that of their pre- 
decessors. They attributed to them power and wis- 
dom to which they themselves made no claim. Each 
one of those teachers, who stood nearest to the writers 
of the New Testament, plainly contrasted his writings 
with theirs, and definitely placed himself on a lower 
level." 

To these general remarks we add the positive re- 
sults which the testimony of the Apostolic Fathers 
gives us. In the letters which Ignatius composed 
while he was conveyed to Eome, between the years 
107 and 115, there are found unmistakable references 
to John vi, 41, 48, 51, 54, and to Matt, iii, 15, xvi, 26. 
In like manner, the short letter of Poly carp, written 
soon after the death of Ignatius, about 115, refers to 
Matt, vi, 13, and xxvi, 41. Polycarp quotes also from 
the first Epistle of John the words : "Every one that 
confesseth not that Jesus Christ is come in the flesh, 
is antichrist." This is of importance, inasmuch as 
the Epistle and the Gospel of John must have been 
the work of one and the same author. The authen- 
tication of the Epistle, therefore, serves at the same 



THEIR AUTHENTICITY, 53 

time for that of the Gospel. Bat a testimony of 
Polycarp respecting the writings of John, consider- 
ing the intimate relation in which he stood to that 
apostle, possesses a value so extraordinary as hardly 
to admit any farther objection against the authen- 
ticity of the fourth Gospel. 

A testimony of the highest significance to the 
authenticity of the Gospels has lately been rendered 
by the epistle of Barnabas, for which we are in- 
debted to the important discovery of the Sinai Man- 
uscript, by Dr. Teschendorf. For two centuries past 
the Christian Church has occupied itself much with 
this epistle; but, unfortunately, in all the manu- 
scripts of the Greek text extant in European libra- 
ries, the first five chapters are wanting. An ancient, 
but very imperfect, Latin translation alone supplied 
the defect. In this Latin translation there is the fol- 
lowing passage: "Let us, therefore, beware that we 
be not found, as it is written, 'many called, but few 
chosen.'" The expression, "as it is written," is used 
throughout the New Testament when a quotation 
is made from the Old Testament Scriptures. To the 
writings composed by apostles this formula could 
evidently not be applied before these writings had 
attained a footing of equal authority with- those of 
the Old Testament. If we find, therefore, in the 
ancient writings of the Church passages quoted from 
the Gospels with the same formula, then it follows 
that, at the time when these writings were composed, 
the Gospels must have had a co-ordinate authority 
with the Old Testament. To obviate this conclusion, 
Dr. Credner asserted "the argument was not valid 
before the formula could be found in the original 
Greek text." And in the order of Divine Providence, 



54 THE GOSPEL RECORDS: 

the entire epistle of Barnabas, in the original Greek 
text, was discovered among the old parchment books 
of a Greek convent, in an Arabian desert, and the 
original text now gives the proof that the important 
formula, "as it is written," was prefixed to the pas- 
sage quoted from Matthew by the author of the 
epistle, and not by the tranlator. This result is of 
no small importance, for the epistle of Barnabas can 
not be placed later than at the beginning of the 
second century. Opinion formerly wavered between 
the first and second decades of years in that century, 
but the Sinai Manuscript has induced most scholars 
to go back to the last decade of years in the first 
century. In this venerable work, which, at the close 
of the second century, Clement, of Alexandria, reck- 
oned as a part of Holy Scripture, there are found 
several obvious references to the Gospel of Matthew; 
and one with the formula accustomed to be employed 
only for citations from Holy Writ. Hence, it follows 
that at the beginning of the second century the 
Gospel of Matthew possessed already the authority 
of sacred Scripture. This fact becomes the more sig- 
nificant if it can be proven, as we shall show in the 
course of our investigation, by the testimony of 
Justin and Irenseus, and even by that of heretics, 
that the Gospel of Matthew could not be taken into 
the number of the sacred books by itself alone, but 
only in connection with the other three Gospels. 

We must not pass over to the next section without 
considering the testimony of Papias, who has been 
erroneously supposed to have been a pupil of the 
apostle John, and, therefore, has been reckoned, by 
some, among the Apostolic Fathers, and whose testi- 
mony has been perverted by those who deny the 



THEIR AUTHENTICITY. 55 

apostolic origin of our Gospels. Dr. Teschendorf, in 
his lately-published essay, "When were our Gospels 
Composed?" sets the whole question in the clearest 
light:* 

"The obscurity which rests upon the man himself, 
as well as upon his testimony, disqualifies him to be- 
come an independent witness, or even to be placed in 
antagonism to other witnesses: yet this has happened. 
Through Eusebius, (iii, 39,) we know that he wrote 
a work in five books, which he styled, "An Exposi- 
tion of the Sayings of the Lord." In collecting ma- 
terials for this work, he entertained the idea that his 
purpose would be better served by the living word 
of tradition than by what he might find in 'books.' 
His sources of information, therefore, according to 
his assurance, were such oral reports as were capable 
of being traced to the apostles. His own language 
in regard to these sources is as follows: 'I shall col- 
lect what I have learned from the elders (presby- 
ters) and have retained in memory, at the same 
time confirming their truth by my own explanations. ' 
Again: 'Also when I fell in with any one who had 
had intercourse with the elders, I made inquiry con- 
cerning the communications of the elders, what An- 
drew or Peter had said, or what Philip, or what 
Thomas, or James, or what John or Matthew, or 
what any other of the disciples of the Lord.' Who 
the elders referred to in these words were is not en- 
tirely clear. Those men of letters who would make 
the term refer to the apostles themselves are cer- 
tainly in the wrong. TTe are rather to understand 
by it venerable men who had had personal inter- 

*We quote from the translation, by Dr. H. Smith, Professor in Lane The- 
ological Seminary. See the "Eolectic," Xo. 10, 1866. 



56 THE GOSPEL RECORDS: 

course with the apostles. So Eusebins, whose judg 
ment rested upon a knowledge of the entire work of 
Papias, understood the word, and expressed himself 
upon the point in still more definite terms. He testi- 
fies expressly that Papias by no means claims to be 
a man who had himself heard and seen the holy 
apostles, but a pupil of Aristion, and of the presby- 
ter, or elder, John, to whose testimony also he most 
frequently appealed. Even Eusebius regarded it as 
an error in Irenseus, that he had characterized him 
as a 'hearer of John and a companion of Polycarp,' 
a passage in which Irenseus must have confounded 
presbyter John, mentioned by Papias as his teacher, 
with the apostle of the same name. This is con- 
firmed by the circumstance that Irenseus derives an 
extravagant tradition touching the millennial king- 
dom expressly, 'from the mouth of the elders, who 
had seen John, the disciple of the Lord.' In this 
passage, beyond doubt, Irenseus distinguishes the 
elders from the apostles; but since he appeals to 
Papias for the tradition concerning the millennial 
kingdom, he leaves no room to doubt that the elders 
of whom he speaks were no others than those men- 
tioned by Papias. 

"According to Eusebius, Papias declared that he 
learned much more in the form of oral tradition, 
'also some unheard-of (strange)* parables and teach- 
ings of the Lord, and some other matter partaking 
too much of the fabulous.' Of this character, Euse- 
bius pronounces the doctrine of a millennial king- 
dom, which, after the resurrection of the dead, in a 
sensuous way, should exist upon this earth. Eusebius 

*The Greek word has both senses. Eusebius appears to have expressed by it 
his own judgment touching the pretended discourses of our Lord. 



THEIR AUTHENTICITY. 07 

thereupon remarks that Papias, as a man of very lim- 
ited intelligence, which his whole book proves, had 
gathered them from misunderstood expressions of the 
apostles. He then proceeds to say that still other 
reports, springing from Aristion and the presbyter 
John, are to be found in the book of Papias, but 
refers those who feel an interest in them to the book 
itself. He then remarks that he will add to his pre- 
vious quotations his tradition concerning Mark. His 
language is: 'And this said the presbyter: Mark, 
the interpreter of Peter, wrote down carefully what 
he remembered; not, however, in the order in which 
Christ had spoken or acted, for neither had he heard 
the Lord nor did he follow him ; but, as already said, 
Peter, who delivered his discourses according to occa- 
sion, but did not wish to collect, in an orderly way, 
the discourses of the Lord. Mark, therefore, was 
not in fault when he wrote down any thing as he re- 
membered it. On one thing only was he intent, not 
to omit any thing which he had heard, and not to 
falsify any thing.' To this statement of Papias, 
Eusebius immediately annexes another concerning 
Matthew, proceeding to say: 'This, then, Papias 
writes concerning Mark, but of Matthew he says: 
Now Matthew wrote the discourses of the Lord in 
the Hebrew language, but each one interpreted them 
as he could.' In these sentences there is much which 
is obscure. It is doubtful, for instance, whether we 
have rightly translated the expression, 'the discourses 
of the Lord;' for that which Papias had previously 
spoken concerning Mark — we mean the words, 
'which Christ had spoken or acted — makes it proba- 
ble that discourses and actions both are to be under- 
stood. Now, do these statements of the presbyter 



58 THE GOSPEL RECORDS: 

and Papias refer to our two Gospels which are named 
after Matthew and Mark? Even if the expression 
1 discourses of the Lord' should be correct, it can not 
thence be inferred that a historical clothing of the 
discourses is excluded, for neither Eusebius nor any 
theologian of Christian antiquity has supposed that 
the expressions of Papias stand opposed to the two 
Gospels. If, on the other hand, any in our time have 
built upon this — the conclusion that our Gospel of 
Mark is to be regarded as the proper book of Mark 
only in the second degree, and that it sprung from a 
later revision of the book written by Mark — this sup- 
position is obviously nothing but a groundless specu- 
lation. It serves only to deliver over our investiga- 
tions touching the origin and mutual relations of our 
first three Gospels a prey to endless conjectures. This 
is true of Mark, and it is not less true of Matthew. 
The statement of Papias concerning the latter has 
its point in this: that he ascribes to Matthew only a 
Hebrew text. If there is any truth in this statement, 
then, especially if we accept the other, that every 
one interpreted it as he could, a wide field of con- 
jecture is opened between the primeval Hebrew text 
and the Greek text in our possession. That Hebrew 
text must have been lost in the very earliest times, 
for not a single one of the earliest Church Fathers 
had seen or used it. For our part, we are fully sat- 
isfied, and rest quietly in the conviction, that the 
supposition of a primary Hebrew text of Matthew, 
on the part of Papias, originated entirely in a mis- 
conception. Perfectly to establish the truth of this 
conviction would require an elaborate and learned 
discussion, for which this is not the proper place. 
We will barely indicate to the reader the source of 



THEIR AUTHENTICITY. 59 

the error into which Papias fell. We learn even 
from the Epistle of Paul to the Galatians the exist- 
ence of vexatious party strifes arising from Judaizing 
teachers. After the destruction of Jerusalem they 
seem to have manifested themselves with ever-in- 
creasing violence. There were two chief parties. 
One, which we may call that of the JSazarenes, was 
of a more simple character than the other, that of 
the Ebionites. Both used a Gospel named after 
Matthew; the first in the Hebrew, the other in the 
Greek language. That they did not hesitate to alter 
the text which came into their hand according to 
their own taste, is a fact springing from their very 
posture — that of mere arbitrary sects; and what has 
come to our actual knowledge on the subject proves 
at once a very great similarity to our Matthew, and 
an arbitrary departure from him in particular pas- 
sages. "When now, at a later day, it was repeated 
that the Nazarenes, who had sprung from the oldest 
Christian stock, possessed a Matthew in Hebrew, 
what was more natural than that the one or the other 
should assume, perhaps in accordance with the pre- 
tense of the sect itself, that Matthew wrote in He- 
brew, and that the Greek text was a translation? 
How widely these texts differed from each other was 
a matter which no one knew accurately or inquired 
into. Moreover, the remote position of the sect of 
the Nazarenes, who resided chiefly near the Dead 
Sea, would not prompt such an investigation. 

"In this explanation of the statement of Papias, 
we are supported by Jerome. Jerome, who — a singu- 
lar accomplishment in his day — was acquainted with 
Hebrew, in the fourth century actually got possession 
of the Hebrew Gospel of the ISTazarenes, and at once 



60 THE GOSPEL RECORDS: 

cried out that he had the original Hebrew text of 
Matthew. After a closer investigation, however, he 
said only that many held this Hebrew text to be the 
real Matthew. He translated it into Greek and 
Latin, and published some observations derived from 
it. From these observations of Jerome, as well as 
from other ancient sources, it can now be proved 
that the view of Papias, shared by many learned 
men in modern times, that the so-called Hebrew 
Gospel is more ancient than our Matthew, must be 
directly reversed ; for that Hebrew book was rather 
borrowed from our Greek Matthew, with arbitrary 
variations of the text. The same remarks are ap- 
plicable to the Greek text of the Hebrew Gospel, 
already mentioned, which was used by the Ebion- 
ites. In a word, this was better known in the 
Church than the Hebrew, simply because it was 
Greek; but in the earliest times it was also regarded 
as only another text of Matthew. With this agrees 
what Papias has written concerning the various in- 
terpretations of Matthew. 

"But we have something more to say of Papias 
and his compilation. As touching his efforts in col- 
lecting materials, he wrote that he believed he should 
be less aided by that which was found in books. 
What books? Did he refer to our Gospels? From 
the expression, this is not impossible, but, from the 
whole character of his book, it is very improbable; 
for manifestly he aimed, on the basis of what at that 
time — perhaps A. D. 130 or 140 — was still orally re- 
lated concerning the Savior, to produce a kind of 
supplement of the Gospels. These last, therefore, he 
could not have regarded as sources — as presenting 
materials for his collection. By the books referred 



THEIR AUTHENTICITY. 61 

to, he must rather have understood the unauthorized 
apocryphal delineations of Christ, so many of which 
made their appearance from the earliest times on- 
ward. These he placed in contrast with his oral 
sources, the genuineness of which appeared to him 
perfectly established, since, equally with the Gospels 
themselves, they had been derived from the apostles, 
although through the testimony of the elders. 

"Now, can any important historical information 
touching our Gospels be derived from all that Papias 
and his book have to offer upon the subject? Even 
though a man of intellect, with much to support him, 
has actually answered this question in the affirmative, 
we can not but give it an unconditional denial. The 
judgment of Eusebius, touching the man, that he 
was a person of limited understanding, is confirmed 
by the fact that his pretended enrichment of evan- 
gelical literature was entirely disregarded by the 
Church. What value would not a single parable of 
the Lord have had, if it could lay claim to credi- 
bility? But no one has taken the least notice of all 
those described by Papias. The fabulous character 
of which Eusebius, a man not distinguished for crit- 
ical acumen, speaks, without doubt belonged to the 
entire work. 

" Nevertheless, in our century, Papias has grown 
into a torch-bearer, and that, too, among men who 
claim special eminence in acute criticism. Why? 
Papias is silent in respect to the Gospel of John. This 
silence is arrayed by Strauss, Kenan, and other critics 
of like spirit, in opposition to the faith of the Church 
touching the genuineness of John's Gospel, as a fact 
suggesting the very gravest doubts. It is maintained 
that Papias could have known nothing of John's 



62 the gospel records: 

Gospel, because he does not mention it. Of course, 
herewith would be gained nothing less than a de- 
cisive testimony against the genuineness of this Gos- 
pel ; for Papias, the Bishop of Hierapolis, resided in 
the vicinity of Ephesus, whence the Gospel of John 
must have gone forth to the world, and the earliest 
information places the martyr-death of Papias at the 
same time with that of Polycarp; that is, in the six- 
teenth year of the second century. 

"Now, a more groundless and frivolous affirmation 
could hardly be made, than that the silence of Pa- 
pias concerning the Gospel of John yields "a strong 
proof against its genuineness." For, in the first 
place, to bear a testimony concerning John's Gospel, 
is a matter entirely aside from the plan and object 
of Papias ; in the second place, from the circumstance 
that Eusebius has quoted nothing from the book of 
Papias concerning the Gospel of John, we are by no 
means able to infer that nothing in reference to John 
existed in that book. The notices touching Mark 
and Matthew are not given by Eusebius as testimo- 
nies for the genuineness of their Gospels, but on 
account of particular circumstances mentioned in 
them. Concerning John, therefore, and this is the 
only conclusion yielded by the silence of Eusebius, 
no similar notices were found. But Eusebius is as 
silent concerning the writings of Luke and the 
Pauline Epistles, in citing from Papias, as concerning 
John's Gospel. Is it not an absurdity to suppose 
that Papias knew nothing of all these? Yet this 
absurd affirmation must necessarily be made, side by 
side, with that concerning John's Gospel. 

"But we have not yet mentioned that Eusebius, 
at the conclusion of his article concerning Papias, 



THEIR AUTHENTICITY. 63 

observes that he cited proof-texts from the 1st Epistle 
of John and the 1st Epistle of Peter. Does not this 
make against us. if we deny any significance to his 
silence concerning Luke, Paul, and the Gospel of 
John? No, the reverse. The genuineness of the 
four Gospels and of the Pauline Epistles was doubted 
by no one in the Church; therefore Eusebius could 
not have conceived the idea of gathering ancient 
testimonies to establish it. The case was different 
with the Catholic Epistles, with the Apocalypse, and 
with the Epistle to the Hebrews. To collect ancient 
witnesses to these writings was a matter of import- 
ance to him. But mav it not be alleged that this is 
a mere arbitrary representation ? We have at hand 
two vouchers for the correctness of our view, which 
will entirely exclude the charge of arbitrariness. Of 
Pohvcarp's letter to the Philippians, Eusebius (iv, 14) 
says nothing, except that it contains proof-texts from 
the 1st Epistle of Peter, and yet this very letter is 
full of citations from Paul. In like manner he pro- 
ceeds to say (iv, 26) that Theophilus, in his book to 
Autolycus, used the Apocalypse, and makes no men- 
tion of the fact that these very books distinguish 
themselves by the citation of a passage from John's 
Gospel containing even a mention of the name of 
John. All this, a blind zeal against the Gospel of 
John has overlooked. One thing in this connection 
we must not leave untouched. Eusebius testifies that 
Papias used the 1st Epistle of John. Xow, inasmuch 
as, upon grounds of the most convincing power, thiit 
Epistle and Gospel must have had the same author, 
the testimony of Papias to the Epistle is at the same 
time a testimony for the Gospel of John." 






64 THE GOSPEL RECORDS : 

§ 9. The Testimony of the Fathers in the Sub-Apostolic 
Age, from A. D. 120-170. 

In this age the Church had to maintain its ground 
amid systematic persecution, organized heresies, and 
philosophic controversy. The apostolic tradition was 
insufficient to silence or condemn false teachers who 
had been trained in the schools of Athens or Alex- 
andria, but new champions were raised up to meet 
the emergency ; and some of these did not scruple to 
maintain the doctrines of Christianity in the garb of 
philosophers. As Christianity was shown to be the 
true completion of Judaism before the Church was 
divided from the Synagogue, so it was well that it 
should be clearly set forth as the center to which old 
philosophers converged before it was declared to su- 
persede them. This, then, was one great work of the 
time, that apologists should proclaim Christianity to 
be the Divine answer to the questionings of heathen- 
dom, as well as the antitype to the law and to the 
hope of the prophets. To a great extent the task 
was independent of the direct use of Scripture. 
Those who discharged it had to deal not so much 
with the words as with the thoughts of the apostles, 
not so much with the records as with the facts of 
Christ's life. Even the later apologists abstained 
from quoting Scripture in their addresses to heathens; 
and the practice was still more alien from the object 
and position of the earliest. The arguments of phi- 
losophy and history were brought forward first, that 
men might be better prepared for the light of revela- 
tion. The literature of this age included almost every 
form of prose composition — letters, chronicles, essays, 
apologies, visions, tales: but although it was thus 



THEIR AUTHENTICITY. 65 

varied, the fragments of it which are left scarcely do 
more than witness to its extent. Omitting what can 
be gathered from the scanty fragments of the Athe- 
nian Apologists, Quadratus and Aristides, from the 
letter to Diognetus, from the Jewish Apologists, from 
Dionysius, Hernias, Hegesippus, etc., we will confine 
ourselves to the all-sufficient testimony of Justin 
Martyr, to whom the first rank must be assigned 
among the apologetical writers of the second century. 
He was of Greek descent, but his family .had been 
settled for two generations in the Eoman colony of 
Flavia Neapolis, near the site of the ancient Sichem, 
where he was born at the close of the first century. 
He died as martyr in the year 166. After he had, as 
as a heathen, successively sought after truth in the 
various philosophical systems, he became, in the thir- 
tieth year of his life, a convert to Christianity, which, 
while continuing to wear his philosopher's cloak, he 
enthusiastically defended by writings and discussions. 
Eusebius has given a list of such books of his as 
had come to his own knowledge. Of the writings 
which bear his name now, two, Apologies and the 
Dialogue with Trypho, are genuine beyond all doubt. 
They exhibit a mass of references to the Gospel nar- 
ratives. The first thing that must strike any one 
who examines a complete collection of the passages 
in question is the general coincidence in range and 
contents with our Gospels. Nothing, for instance, 
furnished wider scope for apocryphal narratives than 
the history of the infancy of our Lord ; yet Justin's 
account of the infancy is as free from legendary ad- 
mixture as it is full of incidents recorded by the 
Evangelists. He does not appear to have known any 
thing more than they knew. The style and language 



k~ 



1/ 



66 THE GOSPEL RECORDS : 

of the quotations which he makes from Christ's 
teaching agree no less exactly with those of the 
Evangelist. He quotes frequently from memory ; he 
interweaves the words which we find separately given 
b}^ Matthew, Mark, and Luke; he condenses, com- 
bines, transposes the language of our Lord as they 
have recorded it; he makes use of phrases character- 
istic of different Gospels ; yet, with very few excep- 
tions, he preserves through all these changes the 
marked peculiarities of the New Testament phrase- 
ology, without the admixture of any foreign element. 
We have observed that the quotations from the Gos- 
pel history in the early Fathers are almost uniformly 
anonymous; the words of Christ were as a living 
voice in the Church, apart from any written record. 
Justin likewise habitually represents Christ as speak- 
ing, and not the Evangelist as relating, his discourses ; 
but he is the first who distinctly refers to what he 
calls " The Memoirs of the Apostles," in which he 
found written "all things concerning Jesus Christ.", 
The peculiar objects which he had in view in his 
extant writings did not suggest, even if they did not 
exclude, any minute description of these records. It 
would have added nothing to the vivid picture of 
Christianity which he drew for the heathen to have 
quoted with exact precision the testimony of this or 
that apostle, even if such a mode of quotation had 
been usual. One thing they might require to know, 
and that he tells them that the words of Christ were 
still the text of Christian instruction, that the "Mem- 
oirs of the Apostles" were still read, together with 
the writings of the prophets, in their weekly serv- 
ices, (Ap., i, 87.) So, on the other hand, the great 
difficulty in a controversy with a Jew was to show 



THEIR AUTHENTICITY. 67 

that the humiliation and death of Christ were recon- 
cilable with the Messianic prophecies. The chief 
facts were here confessed ; and in other points it was 
enough for the apologist to assert, generally, that the 
Memoirs which he quoted rested upon apostolic au- 
thority, (Dial., c. 103.) The manner in which Justin 
alludes to the Memoirs of the Apostles in his first 
Apology, and in his Dialogue with Trypho, confirms 
what has just been said. . If his mode of reference 
were not modified by the nature of the subject, it 
would surely have been the same in both. As it is, 
there is a marked difference, and exactly such as 
might have been expected. In the Apology, which 
contains nearly fifty allusions to the Gospel history, 
he speaks only twice of the apostolic authorship of 
his Memoirs, and in one other place mentions them 
generally. (Ap., i, 86; 87; 33.) In the Dialogue, 
which contains about seventy allusions, he quotes 
them ten times as " the Memoirs of the Apostles," 
and in five other places as " the Memoirs." 

This difference is still more striking if examined 
closely. Every quotation of our Lord's words in the 
Apology is simply introduced by the phrases, " Thus 
Christ said," or "taught," or "exhorted." His words 
were their own witness. For the public events of his 
life Justin refers to the Enrollment of Quirinius, and 
the Acts of Pilate. He quotes the "Gospels" only 
when he must speak of things beyond the range of 
common history. Standing before a Eoman emperor 
as the apologist of the Christians, he confines himself, 
as far as possible, to common ground ; and if he is 
compelled for illustration to quote the books of the 
Christians, he takes care to show that they were 
recognized by the Church, and no private documents 



68 THE GOSPEL RECORDS : 

of his own. Thus, in speaking of the Annunciation, 
he says: "And the angel of God, sent to the Yirgin 
at that season, announced to her glad tidings, saying, 
Behold thou shalt conceive of the Holy Spirit, and 
bear a son, and he shall be called the Son of the 
Highest; and thou shalt call his name Jesus, for he 
shall save his people from their sins, as those who 
have written memoirs of all things concerning our 
Savior Jesus Christ taught us, whom we believed, 
since also the prophetic Spirit said that this would 
come to pass." (Ap., i, 33.) So, again, when ex- 
plaining the celebration of the Eucharist, he adds : 
" The apostles, in the Memoirs made by them, which 
are called Gospels, have handed down that it was 
thus enjoined on them." (Ap., i, 66.) And once 
more, when describing the Christian service, he no- 
tices that "the Memoirs of the Apostles, or the writ- 
ings of the prophets, are read as long as the time 
admits." (Ap., i, 67.) 

There is no further mention of the Memoirs in the 
Apology. In the Dialogue the case w r as somewhat 
different. Trypho was himself acquainted with the 
Gospel, (Dial., c. 10,) and Justin's language becomes 
proportionally more exact. The words of our Lord 
are still quoted very often, simply as His words, 
without any acknowledgment of a written record ; 
but from time to time, when reference is made to 
words of more special moment, so to speak, it is 
added that they are so "written in the Gospel." In 
one passage the contrast between the substance of 
Christ's teaching and the record of it is brought out 
very clearly. After speaking of the death of John 
the Baptist, Justin adds : " Wherefore also our Christ 
when on earth told those who said that Elias must 



THEIR AUTHENTICITY. 69 

come before Christ: 'Elias indeed will come, and will 
restore all things; but I say to you that Elias has 
come already, and they knew him not, but did to him 
whatsoever they listed.' And it is written, ' Then 
understood the disciples that he spake to them con- 
cerning John the Baptist.' " (Dial., c. 49 ; Matt, xvii, 
13.) In another place it appears that Justin refers 
particularly to one out of the Memoirs. " The men- 
tion of the fact," he says, "that Christ changed the 
name of Peter, one of the apostles, and that the event 
has been written in his (Peter's) Memoirs, together 
with His having changed the name of two other 
brethren, who were sons of Zebedee, to that of Boan- 
erges, tended to signify that He was the same through 
whom the surname Israel was given to Jacob, and 
Joshua to Hoshea." (Dial., c. 106 ; Mark iii, 16, 17.) 
Now, the surname given to James and John is only 
found at present in one of our Gospels, and there 
it is mentioned in immediate connection with tho 
change of Peter's name. That Gospel is the Gospel 
of Mark, which, by the universal voice of antiquit}^ 
was referred to the authority of Peter. That Justin 
found in his Memoirs facts at present peculiar to 
Luke's narrative, is equally clear. "And Jesus, as he 
gave up his spirit upon the cross," he writes, "said, 
Father, into thy hands I commend my spirit, as I 
learned from the Memoirs." 

But this is not all : in his Apology, Justin speaks 
of the Memoirs generally as written by the apostles. 
In the Dialogue his words are more precise : "In the 
Memoirs, which I say were composed by the apostles 
and those who followed them, [it is written] that 
sweat as drops (of blood) streamed down (from 
Jesus), as He was praying and saying, Let this cup, 



70 THE GOSPEL RECORDS: 

if it be possible, pass away from me." The descrip- 
tion, it will be seen, precedes the quotation of a pas- 
sage found in Luke, the follower of an apostle, and 
not an apostle himself. Some such fact as this is 
needed to explain why Justin distinguishes at this^ 
particular time the authorship of the records which 
he used. And no short account would apply more 
exactly to our present Gospels than that which he 
gives. Two of them were written by apostles, two 
by their followers. There were many apocryphal 
gospels, but it is not known that any one of them 
bore the name of a follower of the apostles. The 
application of Justin's words to our Gospels seems 
indeed absolutely necessary when they are conrpared 
with those of Tertullian, who says, (Adv. Marcion, iv, 
2:) "We lay down as a principle, first, that the Evan- 
gelic Instrument has apostles for its authors, on 
whom this charge of publishing the Gospel was im- 
posed, by the Lord himself: that if [it includes the 
writings of] apostolic men also, still they were not 
alone, but [wrote] with [the help of] apostles and 

after [the teachings of] apostles In fine, 

John and Matthew out of the number of the apostles 
implant faith in us, Luke and Mark out of the num- 
ber of their followers refresh it." This, then, is the 
sum of what Justin says of the Memoirs of the apos- 
tles. They were many, and yet one: they were called 
gospels : they contained a record of all things con- 
cerning Jesus Christ : they were admitted by Chris- 
tians generally: they were read in their public serv- 
ices : they were of apostolic authority, though not 
exclusively of apostolic authorship : they were com- 
posed in part by apostles, and in part by their fol- 
lowers. And further than this, we gather that they 



THEIR AUTHENTICITY. 71 

related facts only mentioned at present by one or 
other of the Evangelists : that thus they were inti- 
mately connected with each one of the synoptic Gos- 
pels : that they contained nothing, as far as Justin 
expressly quotes them, which our Gospels do not 
now substantially contain. Up to this point of our 
inquiry the identification of his Memoirs with our 
Gospels seems to be as reasonable as it is natural. 
But on the other hand, it is said that there are ob- 
jections to this identification : first, that Justin no 
where mentions the Evangelists by name. It has 
been already shown that there were peculiar circum- 
stances in Justin's case which rendered any definite 
quotation of the Evangelists unlikely and unsuitable, 
even if such a mode of quotation had been common 
at the time. But in fact, when he referred to written 
records of Christ's life and words he made an advance 
beyond which the later Apologists rarely proceeded. 
Tatian. his scholar, has several allusions to passages 
contained in the Gospels of 3Iatthew and John, but 
they are all anonymous. Athenagoras quotes the 
words of our Lord, as they stand in Matthew, four 
times, and appears to allude to passages in Mark and 
John, but he no where mentions the name of an 
Evangelist. Theophilus, in his books to Autolycus. 
cites five or six precepts from "the Gospel." or the 
tc Evangelic Voice. " and once only mentions John as 
% - a man moved by the Holy Spirit." quoting the pro- 
logue to his Gospel; though he elsewhere classes the 
Evangelists with the prophets as all inspired by the 
same Spirit. The usage of Tertullian is very re- 
markable. In his other books he quotes the Gos- 
pels continually, and. though rarely, mentions every 
Evangelist by name ; but in his Apology, while he 



72 THE GOSPEL RECORDS: 

gives a general view of Christ's life and teaching, and 
speaks of the Scriptures as the food and the comfort 
of the Christian, he no where cites the Gospels, and 
scarcely exhibits any coincidence of language with 
them. Clement of Alexandria, as is well known, 
investigated the relation of the synoptic Gospels to 
that of John, and his use of the words of Scripture 
is constant and extensive; and yet in his "Exhort- 
ation to Gentiles," while he quotes every Gospel, 
and all, except Mark, repeatedly, he only mentions 
John by name, and that but once. (Protrep., § 59.) 
Cyprian, in his address to Demetrian, quotes words 
of our Lord as given by Matthew and John, but says 
nothing of the source from which he derived them. 
At a still later time Lactantius blamed Cyprian for 
quoting Scripture in'a controversy with a heathen; 
and though he shows in his Institutions an intimate 
acquaintance with the writings of the Evangelists, he 
mentions John only by name, quoting the beginning 
of his Gospel. Arnobius, again, makes no allusion to 
the Gospels ; and Eusebius, to whose zeal we owe 
most of what is known of the history of the New 
Testament, though he quotes the Gospels eighteen 
times in his "Introduction to Christian Evidences," 
(Prseparatio Evangelica,) yet always does so with- 
out referring to the Evangelist of whose waitings he 
made use. 

It has been objected, secondly, that Justin's cita- 
tions differ considerably from the corresponding pas- 
sages in the Gospels. But they differ simply from 
his having sometimes combined two passages from 
different Gospels into one, or from his having given 
the substance of the passage rather than the exact 
words; for both of which practices he has the exam- 



THEIR AUTHENTICITY. 73 

pie of the apostle Paul in his citations from the Old 
Testament. Such modes of dealing with books are 
common to writers of all ages ; and, as Justin exhib- 
its the same practice in reference to the Old Testa- 
ment, and to profane writers, it is groundless to urge 
the trifling discrepancies which exist between his 
quotations and the received text of the Evangelists 
as any evidence that it was not from them he 
quoted.* 

The last — and, if it could be substantiated, the 
most weighty — objection to our identifying Justin's 
Memoirs of the Apostles with our four Gospels is the 
allegation, that he introduced apocryphal additions 
into his narrative. Some of his quotations, it is said, 
exhibit coincidences with fragments of heretical gos- 
pels. That quotations made by memory from the 
written Gospels should exhibit some points of par- 
tial resemblance to apocryphal gospels is very natural. 
For these apocryphal gospels were not mere crea- 
tions of the imagination, but narratives based on the 
original oral Gospel, of which the written Gospel 
was the authoritative record. The same cause might, 
therefore, very naturally lead to the introduction 
of a common word, a characteristic phrase, or a sup- 
plementary trait. But it is further objected that 
Justin's quotations differ not only in language, but 
also in substance, from our Gospels ; that he at- 
tributes sayings to our Lord which they do not con- 
tain, and narrates events which are either not men- 
tioned by the Evangelists, or recorded by them with 
serious variations from his account. It is enough to 

*A11 the quotations of Justin have been subjected to a thorough critical 
examination by Mr. Westcott in his "Canon," a work not published in this 
country, and to which we are indebted for most of the historical testimonies 
contained in this Part. 

7 



74 THE GOSPEL RECORDS: 

answer, that he never does so when he proposes to 
quote the Apostolic Memoirs. Like other early Fa- 
thers, he was familiar by tradition with the words of 
our Lord which are not embodied in the Gospel. 
Like them, he may have been acquainted with de- 
tails of His life treasured up by such as the elder of 
Ephesus, who might have heard John. But what- 
ever use he makes of this knowledge, he never re- 
fers to the Apostolic Memoirs for any thing which is 
not substantially found in our Gospels. 

Justin's account of the baptism, which might seem 
an exception to this statement, really confirms and 
explains it. It is well known that there was a belief 
long current, that the heavenly voice addressed our 
Lord in the words of the Psalm, which have ever 
been applied to him : " Thou art my Son ; this day 
have I begotten thee." Augustine mentions the read- 
ing as current in his time; and the words are found 
at present in the Cambridge MS., (D,) and in the old 
Latin version. Justin might then have found them 
in the MS. of Luke, which he used ; but the form of 
his reference is remarkable. When speaking of the 
temptation he says : " For the devil, of whom I just 
now spoke, as soon as he [Christ] went up from the 
River Jordan, — when the voice had be^n addressed 
to him, c Thou art my Son ; this day have I begotten 
thee,' — is described in the Memoirs of the Apostles 
as having come to him and tempted him, so far as to 
say to him, Worship me." The definite quotation is 
of that which is confessedly a part of the Evangelic 
text ; it is evident, from the construction of the sen- 
tence, that Justin gives no authority for the disputed 
clause. 

This apparent mixture of two narratives is still 



THEIR AUTHENTICITY. 75 

more remarkable in the mode in which Justin intro- 
duces the famous legend of the fire kindled in Jor- 
dan when Christ descended into the water: "When 
Jesus came to the Jordan, where John was baptizing, 
when he descended to the water, both a fire was 
kindled in the Jordan, and the apostles of Christ 
himself recorded that the Holy Spirit as a dove 
lighted upon him." Here the contrast is complete. 
The witness of the apostles is claimed for that which 
our Gospels relate ; but Justin affirms, on his own 
authority, a fact which, however significant in the 
symbolism of the East, is yet without any support 
from the canonical history. 

Justin lived at the period of transition from a tra- 
ditional to a written Gospel, and his testimony is 
exactly fitted to the position which he held. He re- 
fers to books, but more frequently he appears to bring 
forward words which were currently circulated rather 
than what he had privately read. In both resj)ects 
his witness to our Gospels is most important. For it 
has been shown that his definite quotations from the 
Memoirs are so exactly accordant with the text of 
the Synoptists, as it stands now, or as it was read at 
the close of the second century, that there can be no 
doubt that he was familiar with their writings as 
well as with the contents of them. And the wide 
and minute agreement of what he says of the life 
and teachings of our Lord with what they record of 
it, proves that his knowledge of the Gospel history 
was derived from a tradition they had molded and 
controlled, if not from the habitual and exclusive 
use of the books themselves. 

He states in his First Apology, (A. D. 138,) that 
"the Memoirs of the Apostles," called Gospels, " were 




76 THE GOSPEL RECORDS: 

read every Sunday in the Christian assemblies in 
connection with the writings of the prophets." Now, 
who can suppose that in Justin's time other Gospels 
besides our own — which latter we know, with absolute 
certainty, that they were acknowledged as sacred 
and canonical a few decades after Justin — could have 
been in the sacred use of the Church ? Is it possible 
to suppose, that within twenty or thirty years after 
his death, these Gospels should have been replaced 
by others similar and yet distinct? that he should 
speak of one set of books, as if they were perma- 
nently incorporated into the Christian services, and 
that those who might have been his scholars should 
speak exactly in the same terms of another collec- 
tion, as if they ha*d had no rivals within the orthodox 
pale? that the substitution should have been effected 
in such a manner that no record of it has been pre- 
served, while smaller analogous reforms have been 
duly chronicled? The complication of historical dif- 
ficulties is overwhelming ; and the alternative is that 
which has already been justified on critical grounds, 
the belief that when Justin spoke of apostolic 
memoirs or gospels, he meant the Gospels which 
were enumerated in the early anonymous canon, and 
whose mutual relations were eloquently expounded 
by Irenseus. 

This, then, appears to be established, both by ex- 
ternal and internal evidence, that Justin's "gospels" 
can be identified with those of Matthew, Mark, and 
Luke. If his references to John are not so frequent, 
this follows from the character of the fourth Gospel. 
It was unlikely that he should quote its peculiar 
teaching in apologetic writings addressed to Jews 
and heathen ; and at the same time he exhibits types 



THEIR AUTHENTICITY. 77 

of language and doctrine which, if not immediately 
drawn from John, yet mark the presence of his in- 
fluence and the recognition of his authority. The 
sentence, which is entirely peculiar to John, "And 
the Word was made flesh," reappears unmistakably 
in several passages. The answer which, according 
to Justin, the Baptist gives to the interrogating mes- 
sengers of the Jews, "I am not Christ, but the voice 
of a preacher," is a clear quotation from John i, 20, 
23. The words of the prophet Zachariah, (xii, 10,) 
John quotes in a manner no where else to be found ; 
and since Justin does the same, he must be consid- 
ered dependent upon John. Finally, we find in Jus- 
tin's First Apology (A. D. 138) the following : "Christ 
has said, Except ye be born again, ye can not enter 
the kingdom of heaven. But that it is imjDOSsible 
that those who have once been born should enter 
again into their mother's womb, is clear to every 
man." This is certainly a plain reference to our 
Lord's conversation with K"icodemus in John iii. 

In addition to the Gospels, the Apocalypse is the 
only book of the Xew Testament to which Justin 
alludes by name. Even that is not quoted, but ap- 
pealed to generally, as a proof of the existence of pro- 
phetic power in the Christian Church. But it can 
not be" concluded from his silence that Justin was 
either unacquainted with the Acts and the Epistles, 
or unwilling to make use of them. His controversy 
against Marcion is decisive as to his knowledge of 
the greater part of the books, and various Pauline 
forms of expression and teaching show that the apostle 
of the Gentiles had helped to mold his faith and 
words. 



78 THE GOSPEL RECORDS: 

§10. The Formation of a Canon of the Universally- 
Acknowledged Books of the New Testament at the 
Close of the Second Century. 

The Latin fragment on the Canon, first published 
by Muratori, was discovered in the Ambrosian Li- 
brary at Milan in a MS. of great antiquity, which 
purported to contain the writings of Chrysostom. 
It is mutilated both at the beginning and end; and 
is disfigured throughout by gross inaccuracies and 
barbarisms, due in part to the ignorance of the tran- 
scriber, and in part to the translator of the original 
text ; for there can be little doubt that it is a version 
from the Greek. But, notwithstanding these defects, 
it is of the greatest interest and importance. That 
this catalogue was written soon after the time of the 
Roman Bishop Pius, (A. D. 142-157,) consequently 
about A. D. 170, and in all probability at Rome, we 
may infer from the fact that the author of the cata- 
logue says: "The Shepherd was written very lately, 
in our time, by Hermes, in the city of Rome, while 
Pius, his brother, occupied the Episcopal Chair." In- 
ternal evidence fully confirms its claims to this high 
antiquity; and it may be regarded, on the whole, as 
a summary of the opinion of the Western Church on 
the Canon shortly after the middle of the second cen- 
tury. The fragment commences with the last words 
of a sentence which evidently referred to the Gospel 
of Mark. The Gospel of Luke, it is then said, stands 
third in order — in the Christian Canon — having been 
written by "Luke the physician," the companion of 
Paul, who, not being an eye-witness, based his nar- 
rative on such information as he could obtain, begin- 
ning from the birth of John. The fourth place is 



THEIR AUTHENTICITY. 79 

given to the Gospel of John. Though there is no 
trace of any reference to Matthew, it is impossible 
not to believe that it occupied the first place among 
the four Gospels of the anonymous writer. Assuming 
this, it is of importance to notice that he regards 
our canonical Gospels as essentially one in purpose, 
contents, and inspiration. He draws no distinction 
between those which were written from personal 
knowledge, and those which rested on the teaching 
of others. He alludes to no doubt as to their author- 
ity, no limit as to their reception, no difference as to 
their usefulness. " Though various points are taught 
in each of the Gospels, it makes no difference to the 
faith of believers, since, in all of them, all things are 
declared by one informing Spirit concerning the na- 
tivity, the passion, the resurrection, the conversation 
[of our Lord] with his disciples, and his double ad- 
vent, at first in humility, and afterward in royal 
power as he will yet appear/' This first recognition 
of the distinctness and unity of the Gospels, of their 
origin from human care and Divine guidance, is as 
complete as any later testimony. The fragment 
lends no support to the theory which supposes that 
they were gradually separated from the mass of sim- 
ilar books. Their peculiar position is clear and 
marked ; and there is not the slightest hint that it 
was gained after a doubtful struggle or only at a late 
date. Admit that our Gospels were regarded from 
the first as authoritative records of Christ's life, and 
then this new testimony explains and confirms the 
fragmentary notices which alone witness to the earlier 
belief; deny it, and the language of one who had 
probably conversed with Polycarp at Borne becomes 
an unintelligible riddle. 



80 THE GOSPEL RECORDS : 

Irenseus died as a martyr A. D. 202. About the 
year 177 he succeeded Photiiius in the Bishopric of 
Lyons. In his youth he had sat at the feet of the 
venerable, aged Poly carp, who in his time had been 
a disciple of the Evangelist John, and he had, more- 
over, been acquainted with other eye-witnesses of 
the Gospel history. In his letter to Florinus, (see 
Euseb. Hist., Eccl. v, 20,) he thus writes: "I saw 
thee, when 1 was yet young, with Polycarp, in Asia 
Minor, when thou wast living in the splendor of the 
Imperial Court, and wast at pains to secure his 
approbation. For what happened at that period 
I remember better than what has recently occurred. 
That which we receive in youth grows with our- 
selves, and clings to us firmly. And so I am able 
now to tell where the blessed Polycarp sat in his ad- 
dresses; how he came in and went out; how he lived, 
and how he looked; what discourses he held to the 
people ; how he spoke of his intimate intercourse 
with John, and with others who had seen the Lord, 
and quoted their own discourses ; how he rehearsed 
what he had heard from those who, with their own 
eyes, had seen the Light of the World, in full agree- 
ment with the Scripture." 

Surely, the testimony of Irenseus on the authentic- 
ity of our Gospels, involving that of Polycarp, must, 
in the judgment of every sober-minded, candid critic, 
far outweigh all the scruples raised by skepticism. 
In his work against the heretics he availed himself 
throughout of our Gospels, naming each Evangelist. 
The number of passages in which this is done 
amounts, according to Tischendorf, to about four 
hundred, of which more than eighty are quotations 
from the Gospel of John. He, moreover, expressly 



THEIR AUTHENTICITY. 81 

asserts that tnere exist, of necessity, four Gospels, pre- 
cisely four, neither more nor less, comparing this fact 
with the four quarters of the globe, the four princi- 
pal winds, the four faces of the cherubim. He says, 
the four Gospels are the four pillars of the Church 
spread over the earth's surface, recognizing in their 
quadruplicity a special decree of the Creator. Such 
a testimony is utterly irreconcilable with the notion 
that our Gospels began to acquire their authority in 
the time of Irenseus himself, and that to the three 
elder a latter fourth was at that time striving to at- 
tach itself. It is asserted by the Critical School of 
Baur that the Gospel of John made its first appear- 
ance about the year 150, and that Polycarp never 
spoke of it to Irenseus. If this were the case, how 
is it conceivable that Irengeus should have believed 
this work, which appeared as the most sublime leg- 
acy of John to the Christian Church, to be genuine, 
and should have employed it as a sacred and safe 
weapon in his conflict with men who dealt in cor- 
rupt scriptures and apocryphal writings? Though 
Irenseus has not given us a professed catalogue of the 
books of the Kew Testament, we learn from his 
treatise that he received, as authentic and canonical 
Scriptures, not only the four Gospels, but also the 
Acts of the Apostles, the Epistle to the Romans, 
the Epistles to the Galatians, Ephesians, Philippians, 
and Colossians, the First and Second Epistles to the 
Thessalonians, the two Epistles to Timothy, the 
Epistle to Titus, the two Epistles of Peter, and the 
First and Second Epistles of John. Can it be sup- 
posed, with reason, that forgeries came into use in 
the time of Irenseus, which he must have been able 
to detect by his own knowledge? that they were 



': 



82 THE GOSPEL RECORDS : 

received without suspicion or reserve in the Church 
over which he presided? Is it possible that he de- 
cided otherwise than his first master, when he speaks 
of the tradition of the apostles by which the canon 
of the Scripture was determined? (Adv. Hser., iv, 
33, 8.) He appeals to the known succession of teach- 
ers in the Churches of Eome, Smyrna, and Ephesus, 
who held fast, up to his own time, the doctrine 
which they had received from the first age ; and is it 
possible that he used writings, as authentic and 
authoritative, which were not recognized by those 
who must have had unquestionable means of decid- 
ing on their apostolic origin? 

A cotemporary of Irenseus was Clement of Alex- 
andria ; he was trained in the school of Pantaenus, 
who was personally connected with some immediate 
disciples of the apostles. He distinguishes the Gospel 
from the other writings of the New Testament, which 
he calls 6 aizoGToXoq, and sometimes anoGToloi, but 
combines them "as Scriptures of the Lord," with the 
Law and the Prophets, and as " ratified by the au- 
thority of one Almighty Power." 

Tertullian, a presbyter of the Church of Carthage, 
I was born 160, and died about the year 220. He be- 
came a Montanist about the year 200. But his testi- 
mony to the authority of the canonical Scriptures is 
exactly the same before and after he embraced the 
tenets of Montanus. In his numerous works, we find 
many hundred passages of our Gospels cited as de- 
cisive proof-texts; from the Gospel of John alone, 
over two hundred. He uniformly recognizes the four 
Gospels as written by the Evangelists to whom we 
ascribe them ; distinguishing Matthew and John as 
apostles, and Mark and Luke as apostolical men, and 



THEIR AUTHENTICITY. 83 

asserting the authority of their writings as inspired 
books, acknowledged by the Christian Church from 
their original date. (Adv. Marcion, I, c, iv, 2.) He 
notices particularly the introduction of the word Tes- 
tament for the earlier word "Instrument" as applied 
to the dispensation and the record, (Adv. ILarcion, 
iv, 1,) and appeals to the Xew Testament, as made 
up of '-the Gospels" and " Apostles.*' (Adv. Prax., 
15.) This comprehensive testimony extends to the 
four Gospels, the Acts, 1 Peter, 1 John, thirteen 
Epistles of Paul, and the Apocalypse. " Tertnllian," 
remarks Dr. Tischendorf, '"presents an irrefragable 
principle by which the truth of the several parts of 
the Christian Canon and — a point on which he insists 
most earnestly — the genuineness of the apostolic 
writings are to be tested. He shows and demands 
that a testimony which now passes for truth should 
bear this test : that it was regarded as truth in former 
days ; that from this previous authority we are to 
ascend to the apostles themselves; but that apostolic 
genuineness is to be measured by the testimony of 
the Apostolic Churches, the Churches which were 
founded by the apostles in person. (See Adv. Alarcion, 
iv, 5.) Is it at all credible that this acute man should 
have fallen into an uncritical carelessness just at this 
point; his reception, namely, and defense of the gen- 
uineness of the four Gospels? The passages just re- 
ferred to are in his famous work against Marcion, 
who, following; the bent of his heretical humor, had 
arbitrarily tampered with the Evangelical text. Of 
the four Gospels he had entirely suppressed three, 
and in the fourth, Luke, he had made such changes 
as suited him. Now Tertnllian, in his work against 
him, appeals expressly to the testimony of the Apos- 



84 THE GOSPEL RECORDS: 

tolic Churches for the four collective Gospels. Is this 
assurance in the mouth of a man like Tertullian to 
pass for nothing? At the time when he wrote it, 
scarcely more than a hundred years had yet passed 
since the death of John. At that time the testimony 
of the Apostolic Church of Ephesus, to which he ap- 
peals — a Church in which John had long labored, 
and in whose bosom he died — was, in fact, perfectly 
decisive, as touching the genuineness or the spuri- 
ousness of the Gospel of John ; and the task of ascer- 
taining the judgment and testimony of this Church 
was perfectly easy. In this connection, it is a point 
not to be overlooked that we have not here to do 
with a mere man of letters, dealing in learned ob- 
servations, but with a man with whom this was a 
question of deep and holy solemnity touching his 
faith ; yea, touching the salvation of his soul. The 
foundation Scriptures of Christianity, claiming for 
themselves an apostolic origin, books which even at 
that time awoke the universal opposition of that 
wordily wisdom, from whose school Tertullian himself 
had proceeded, is it possible to believe that he would 
have accepted these books with an unscrupulous 
credulity? But now, since he, in addition, expressly 
assures us that in his decisive defense of the apostolic 
origin of all four of the Gospels, he goes back to the 
warrant of the Apostolic Churches, it would plainly 
fall into the category of contemptible quibbling, to 
pretend to cherish doubts touching his conscientious 
investigation of the apostolic origin of the Gospels." 
Al] the Fathers, at the close of the second century, 
from opposite quarters of Christendom, agree in ap- 
pealing to the testimony of antiquity as proving the 
authenticity of the Gospels, and other books which 



THEIR AUTHENTICITY. 85 

they used as Christian Scriptures. The appeal was 
made at a time when it was easy to try its worth. 
The links which connected them with the apostolic 
age were few and well known : and. if they had not 
been continuous, it would have been easy to expose 
the break. But their appeal was never gainsay ed. 
"We need, therefore, not descend to later testimonies. 
Let us. in conclusion, bear in mind that the admit- 
ted universal reception of the Gospels, toward the 
close of the second century, conveys to us the testi- 
mony of a communion not only fully qualified to ar- 
rive at a sound judgment on the authenticity of the 
Gospels, but also deeply interested in ascertaining 
the truth upon the question at issue, inasmuch as the 
early Christians, by believing the Gospels to be the 
authentic productions of the men whose names they 
bear, exposed themselves to the fiercest persecu- 
tions — from which it follows that thev must have 
come to them with an evidence of their authenticity 
such as could not be gainsayed. 

§11. The Early Versions of the Xett Testament. 

Of the utmost importance is the fact that already 
in the second half of the second century our four 
Gospels had received a common translation into 
Latin, as well as into Syriac. 

THE PESHITO. 

Almost universal opinion assigns the Peshito, or 
" simple" Syriac. (Aramaic.) version to the most re- 
mote Christian antiquity. The Syriac Christians of 
Malabar even now claim for it the right to be con- 
sidered as an Eastern original of the Xew Testament: 



86 THE GOSPEL RECORDS: 

and though their tradition is wholly unsupported by 
external evidence, it is not, to a certain extent, with- 
out all plausibility. The dialect of the Peshito, even 
as it stands now, represents in part, at least, that 
form of Aramaic which was current in Palestine. 
In this respect it is like the Latin Vulgate, which, 
though revised, is marked by the provincialisms of 
Africa. Both versions appear to have had their ori- 
gin in districts where their languages were spoken 
in impure dialects, and afterward to have been cor- 
rected and brought nearer to the classical standard. 
In the absence of an adequate supply of critical ma- 
terials it is impossible to construct the history of 
these recensions in the Syriac; the analogy of the 
Latin is at present our only guide. But if a con- 
jecture be allowed, it is probable that the various 
facts of the case are adequately explained by sup- 
posing that versions of separate books of the New 
Testament were first made and used in Palestine, 
perhaps within the apostolic age, and that shortly 
afterward these were collected, revised, and completed 
at Edessa. Many circumstances combine to give sup- 
port to this belief. The early condition of the Syrian 
Church, its wide extent and active vigor, lead us to 
expect that a version of the Holy Scriptures into the 
common dialect could not have been long deferred ; 
and the existence of an Aramaic Gospel was in 
itself likely to suggest the work. Differences of style, 
no less than the very nature of the case, point to 
separate translations of different books ; and, at the 
same time, a certain general uniformity of character 
bespeaks some subsequent revision. Whatever may 
be thought of the alleged intercourse of Abgarus 
with our blessed Lord, Edessa itself is signalized in 



THEIR AUTHENTICITY. 87 

early Church history by many remarkable facts. It 
was called the ••holy" and "blessed" city. (Horse 
Syriacae ;) its inhabitants were said to have been 
brought over by Thaddeus, in a marvelous manner, 
to the Christian faith: and. "from that time forth," 
Eusebius adds. (Euseb., H. E.. ii. 1.) "the whole 
people of Edessa has continued to be devoted to the 
name of Christ, exhibiting no ordinary instance of 
the goodness of the Savior;" in the seaond century 
it became the center of an important Christian 
school, and long afterward retained its preeminence 
among the cities of this province. As might be ex- 
pected, tradition fixes on Edessa as the place whence 
the Peshito took its rise. Gregory Bar Hebraeus. one 
of the most learned and accurate of Syrian writers, 
relates that the New Testament Peshito was -made 
in the time of Thaddeus. and Abgarns. King of 
Edessa;" when, according to the universal ojnnion 
of ancient writers, the apostle went to proclaim 
Christianity in Mesopotamia. 

ZSTo other direct historical evidence remains to de- 
termine the date of the Peshito : and it is impos- 
sible to supply the deficiency by the help of quota- 
tions occurring in early Syrian writers. Xo Syrian 
works of a very early period exist. Still it is known 
that books were soon translated from Syriac into 
Greek, and while such an intercourse existed it is 
scarcely j30ssible that the Scriptures remained un- 
translated. Again, the controversial writings of 
Bardesanes necessarily imply the existence of a 
Syriac version of the Bible. Tertullian's example 
may show that he could hardly have refuted ilarcion 
without the constant use of Scripture. And more 
than this. Eusebius tells us that Hegesippus -made 



88 THE GOSPEL RECORDS: 

quotations from the Gospel according to the Hebrews, 
and especially from [writings in] the Hebrew lan- 
guage, showing thereby that he was a Christian of 
Hebrew descent." (Euseb., H. B., iv, 22.) This tes- 
timony is valuable as coming from the only Greek 
writer likely to have been familiar with Syriac liter- 
ature : and may we not see in the two Gospels thus 
mentioned, two recensions of Matthew — the one dis- 
figured by apocryphal traditions, and the one written 
in the dialect of Eastern Syria? Ephrem Syrus, 
himself a deacon of Edessa, treats the version in 
such a manner as to prove that it was already old in 
the fourth century. He quotes it as a book of estab- 
lished authority, calling it "Our Version;" he speaks 
of the "Translator" as one whose words were fa- 
miliar, (Horse Syriacae;) and, though the dialects of 
the East are proverbially permanent, his explana- 
tions show that its language, even in his time, had 
become partially obsolete. Another circumstance 
serves to exhibit the venerable age of this version. 
It was universally received by the different sects 
into which the Syrian Church was divided in the 
fourth century, and so has continued current even 
to the present time, The respect in which the 
Peshito was held was further shown by the fact that 
it was taken as the basis of other versions in the 
East. The text, even in its present corrupt state, 
exhibits remarkable agreement with the most ancient 
Greek MSS., and the earliest quotations. The very 
obscurity which hangs over its origin is a proof of 
its venerable age, because it shows that it grew up 
spontaneously among Christian congregations, and 
was not the result of any public labor. It is almost 
universally referred to the end of the second century, 



THEIR AUTHENTICITY. 89 

but some competent scholars have fixed its date 
within the first half of the second century. 

THE OLD LATIN VERSION. 

At first it is natural to look to Italy as the center 
of the Latin literature of Christianity, and the orig- 
inal source of that Latin version of the Holy Scrip- 
tures which, in a later form, has become identified 
with the Church of Home, yet, however natural such 
a belief may be, it finds no support in history. Eome 
itself, under the emperors, was well described as a 
" Greek city;" and Greek was its second language. 
As far as we can learn, the mass of the poorer pop- 
ulation — every-where the great bulk of the early 
Christians — was Greek, either in descent or in speech. 
Among the names of the fifteen bishops of Eome, up 
to the close of the second century, four only are 
Latin ; but in the next century the proportion is 
nearly reversed. When Paul first wrote to the Eo- 
man Church he wrote in Greek ; and in the long list 
of salutation to its members, with which the Epistle 
is concluded, only four Latin names occur. Shortly 
afterward, Clement wrote to the Corinthians in Greek 
in the name of the Church of Eome ; and at a later 
date we find the bishop of Corinth writing in Greek 
to Soter, the ninth in succession from Clement. Jus- 
tin, Hernias, and Tatian published their Greek treat- 
ises at Eome. The Apologies to the Eoman emperors 
were in Greek. Modestus, Caius, and Asterius Ur- 
banus bear Latin names, yet their writings were 
Greek. Meanwhile, however, though Greek contin- 
ued to be the natural, if not the sole language of the 
Eoman Church, the seeds of Latin Christianity were 

rapidly developing in Africa. Nothing is known in 

8 



90 THE GOSPEL RECORDS: 

detail of the origin of the African Churches. At the 
close of the second century Christians were found in 
that country in every place and of every rank. They 
who were but of yesterday, Tertullian says about the 
year 200, (Apol., i, 37,) already fill the palace, the sen- 
ate, the forum, and the camp, and leave their temples 
only to the heathen. To persecute the Christians 
was even then to decimate Carthage. These fresh 
conquests of the Eoman Church preserved their dis- 
tinct nationality in their language. Carthage — the 
second Eome — escaped the Graecism of the first. In 
Africa Greek was no longer a current dialect. A 
peculiar form of Latin, vigorous, elastic, and copious, 
however far removed from the grace and eloquence 
of a classical standard, fitly expressed the spirit of 
Tertullian. It is, then, to Africa we must look for 
the first traces of the "Itala." "Before the end of 
the second century it had already acquired," says 
Tischendorf, " a degree of public authority for the 
Latin translator of the great Greek work of Irenseus 
against the heretics, who is to be placed at about the 
close of the second century — and this translator is 
followed by Tertullian in his citations from Irenseus — 
as well as Tertullian himself, at the close of the same 
century, follow the text of the Itala. This authority 
of the Latin translation of the Gospels, at the end of 
the second century, necessarily presupposes that at 
that time it had an age of several decades of years." 
Not only is the character of the version itself a proof 
of its great antiquity, but the mutual relations of dif- 
ferent parts of it show that it was made originally by 
different hands ; and if so, that it was coeval with the 
introduction of Christianity into Africa, and the re- 
sult of the spontaneous efforts of African Christians. 



THEIR AUTHENTICITY. 91 



§ 12. The Testimony of Apocryphal and Heretical 
"Writings. 



Before we inquire into the relation which the 
heretical and apocryphal writings bear to our canon- 
ical Gospels, let us take a survey of the heretical sects 
which arose in the first two centuries, and their rela- 
tion to the o-reat bodv of Christians called the Cath- 
olic Christians, or the Catholic Church. They may 
be arranged under two great principles : " That well- 
known pharisaical Judaism whose shibboleth was 
that the Gentiles should be constrained to observe 
the ceremonial law. and which continued to attack 
Paul in his missionary labors, produced Elionism. in 
the general sense of this term : the desire to amalga- 
mate with Christianity Grecian and Oriental the- 
osophy. and an opposition to Judaism, inclusive of 
the Old Testament, on the part of Gentile philoso- 
phers converted to Christianity, introduced Gnosti- 
cism. These two directions were, however, also com- 
bined into a Gnostic-Ebionism. a system for which 
the doctrines of the Essenes seem to have served as a 
point of transition and connecting link. This * oppo- 
sition of science falsely so called ' (1 Tim. vi. 20) 
began to intrude into Christianity during the latter 
years of Paul's labors. Against it Paul uttered a 
prophetic warning in his farewell address at ALiTetus. 
(Acts xx. 29. 30.) Afterward he opposed it in the 
Epistles to the Ephesians and to the Colossians. and 
especially in his pastoral letters, even as Peter com- 
bated it in his First Epistle. It assumed many and 
varied forms. It appeared in the shape of Oriental 
theosophv. mao;ic. and theurgy, in voluntary asceti- 
cism with reference to meats and marriage, in fan- 



92 THE GOSPEL RECORDS : 

cied mysteries about the nature and subordination of 
heavenly powers and spirits, and in the transforma- 
tion of certain fundamental doctrines of Christian- 
ity — such as that of the resurrection, 2 Tim. ii, 18 — 
into a mere idealism. These seeds of evil had already 
borne abundant fruit when John came to take up his 
residence in Asia Minor. Accordingly, in his First 
Epistle, the apostle opposed the growing heresy, and 
more especially that form of Gnosis, in which the in- 
carnation of God in Christ was denied." (See Kurtz's 
Church History, pp. 71 and 72.) 

The Ebionites proper — as distinguished from the 
Nazarenes, who, though they held themselves bound 
still to observe the ceremonial law, believed in the 
Divinity of Christ, and did not reject Paul entirely — 
deemed the observance of the ceremonial law indis- 
pensably necessary for salvation ; they saw in Jesus 
nothing but a human Messiah, whom, at his baptism, 
God had endowed with supernatural powers. His 
Messianic activity they limited to his teaching, by 
which he had enlarged and perfected the law, adding 
to it new and more strict commandments. The death 
of Christ was an offense to them, under which they 
consoled themselves with the promise of his return, 
when they expected that he would set up a terres- 
trial kingdom. They, of course, repudiated the apos- 
tle Paul entirely, and in order to have some basis for 
their monstrous heresies, they mutilated and interpo- 
lated the Gospel of Matthew. A similar position to 
the Gospels was taken by the Gnostics. Though their 
doctrines were as irreconcilable with the contents of 
our Gospels as those of the Ebionites, they did not 
assail their authenticity, but rejected them only as 
carnal apprehensions of Jesus and his doctrine, while 



THEIR AUTHENTICITY. 93 

Marcion boldly mutilated the Gospel of Luke^ and de- 
clared this to be the only true Gospel. With regard 
to the evidence the Gnostics give for the authenticity 
of our Gospels, they may be divided into two princi- 
pal classes: the theosophic (or Yalentinian) Gnostics, 
and the 3Iarcionites. 

Xow. if it can be proved that the theosophic Gnos- 
tics appealed to our canonical Gospels as freely and 
confidently as did the Catholic Christians, that they 
did not pretend to possess any Gospel, in any way 
cortradictory to the account of .Christ's ministry con- 
tained in our Gospels, and that the Gospel used by 
the Marcionites was essentially the same with that of 
Luke, we have an argument of uncommon strength 
in favor of the authenticity of our Gospels. For these 
early heretics were, in their opinions and feelings, so 
widely separated from the Catholic Christians, that 
they present themselves as an independent class of 
witnesses, and they lived at a time, when, upon the 
supposition that our Gospels were not written by the 
authors whose names they bear, it must have been 
very easy to them to prove the fact. Could they have 
rejected the authority of the Gospels on this ground, 
they would certainly have done it. And had they 
done so, it is altogether incredible that the fact should 
not have been conspicuous throughout the controver- 
sial writings of Irenreus and Tertullian. the two prin- 
cipal writers against the Gnostics. From their works 
it does not appear that the Yalentinians. the Mar- 
cionites, or any other Gnostic sect, adduced in support 
of their opinions a single narrative relating to the 
public ministry of Christ, besides what is found in 
the Gospels, or that any sect appealed to the author- 
ity of any history of our Lord's ministry besides the 



94 THE GOSPEL RECORDS : 

Gospels, except so far as the Marcionites, in their use 
of the interpolated and mutilated copy of Luke's 
Gospel, may be regarded as forming a verbal excep- 
tion. The Fathers were eager to urge against the 
Gnostics the charge of corrupting and perverting the 
Scriptures, and of fabricating apocryphal writings, 
but they never brought forward the far graver alle- 
gation, that the Gnostics pretended to set up other 
histories of Christ in opposition to those received by the 
great body of Christians. Had they been guilty of 
this, the fact neither would nor could have remained 
unnoticed. On the contrary, Irenseus says : " There 
is such assurance concerning the Gospels, that the 
heretics themselves bear testimony to them, so that 
each one of them, taking the Gospels as his starting- 
point, endeavors thereby to maintain his own teach- 
ing." (Adv. Hser., Ill, xii, 7.) And Tertullian says: 
" They profess to appeal to the Scriptures ; they urge 
arguments from the Scriptures — as if they could 
draw arguments about matters of faith from any 
other source than the records of faith." (De Prsescr. 
Hser., c. xiv.) He takes in this treatise, moreover, 
especial pains to prove that they had no right at all 
to appeal to the Scriptures as they do. 

But the question naturally arises, how could the 
Gnostics defend their strange doctrines, and yet ap- 
peal to our Gospels? This important question is 
more fully answered by Mr. Norton than by any other 
writer on this subject. "We will, therefore, give to 
the reader the benefit of a brief condensation of his 
argument: 1. The theosophic Gnostics, in common 
with the Catholic Christians, applied the allegorical 
mode of interpretation to the New Testament. Neg- 
lecting the proper meaning of words, they educed 



THEIR AUTHENTICITY. 95 

from them mystical senses. Their whole system of 
interpretation was, besides, arbitrary, and unsup- 
ported by any correct principle. The vocabulary of 
the theosophic Gnostics, like that of other erring 
sects, consisted, in great part, of words from the 
]S"ew Testament, on which they had imposed new 
senses. It thus became easy for them, on the one 
hand, to find supposed references to their theory; 
and, on the other, to explain away much that was 
inconsistent with it. Like other false expositors of 
Scripture, they detached particular passages from 
their connection, and infused a foreign meaning into 
the words. Irenseus, after saying they appealed to 
unwritten tradition as a source of their knowledge, 
goes on to remark, that, " twisting, according to the 
proverb, a rope of sand, they endeavor to accommo- 
date, in a plausible manner to their doctrines, the 
parables of the Lord, the declarations, of the prophets, 
or the words of the apostles, so that their fiction may 
not seem to be without proof. But they neglect the 
order and connection of the Scriptures, and disjoin, 
so far as they are able, the members of the truth. 
They transpose and refashion, and, making one thing 
out of another, they deceive many by a fabricated 
show of the words of the Lord which they put to- 
gether. (Cont. Hseres., lib. I, c. viii, § 1.) 2. They 
maintained a principle similar to a fundamental doc- 
trine of the Eoman Catholics ; namely, that religious 
truth could not be learned from the Scriptures alone, 
without the aid of the oral instructions of Christ and 
his apostles, as preserved by tradition. "When," 
says Irenseus, "they are confuted by proofs from the 
Scriptures, they turn and accuse the Scriptures them- 
selves, as if they were not correct, nor of authority; 



96 THE GOSPEL RECORDS : 

they say that they contain contradictions, and that 
the truth can not be discovered from them by those 
who are ignorant of tradition. For that it was not 
delivered in writing, but orally; whence Paul said, 
4 We speak wisdom among the perfect, but not the 
wisdom of this world.' " (Lib. Ill, c ii, § 2.) ""The 
heretics," says Tertullian, "pretend that the apostles 
did not reveal all things to all, but taught some doc- 
trines openly to every one, some secretly and to a few 
only." (De Prsescr. User., c. xxv.) What was pecu- 
liar in their own doctrines they regarded as that 
esoteric teaching which had come down to them by 
oral tradition. This notion of a secret tradition is 
not found in Justin Martyr, Irenseus, or Tertullian. 
When the two latter speak of tradition, they mean 
that traditionary knowledge of the history and doc- 
trines of Christianity which necessarily existed among 
Christians. It is described by.Irenseus as a "tradi- 
tion manifest throughout the world, and to be found 
in every Church." (Lib. Ill, c. iii, § 1.) By it, he 
says, a knowledge of our religion was preserved 
without books among believers in barbarous nations. 
(Ibid., c. iv, § 2.) At the end of about a century 
from the preaching of the apostles, there must have 
been, throughout the communities which they had 
formed, a general acquaintance with what they had 
taught, even had no written records of our religion 
been extant. In regard likewise to facts — important 
in their reference to Christianity, as, for example, the 
genuineness of the books of the New Testament — the 
Christians of the last half of the second century 
must have relied on the testimony of their prede- 
cessors. It is this traditionary knowledge concern- 
ing Christianity — not secret, but open to all — -which 



THEIR AUTHENTICITY. 97 

Irenseus and Tertullian appeal to with justifiable con- 
fidence in their reasoning against the heretics, when 
they distinguish between the evidence from tradition 
and the evidence from Scripture. 3. In connection 
with their notion of a secret tradition, some of the 
Gnostics said, according to Irenseus, "that the apos- 
tles, practicing dissimulation, accommodated their 
doctrine to the capacity of their hearers, and their 
answers to the previous conceptions of those who 
questioned them, talking blindly with the blind, 
weakly with the weak, and conformably to their 
error with those who were in error ; and that thus 
they preached the Creator to those who thought the 
Creator was the only God, but to those able to com- 
prehend the unknown Father, they communicated 
this unspeakable mystery in parables and in enig- 
mas." (Lib. Ill, cap. v, § 1.) '-Some," says Irenseus, 
"impudently contend that the apostles, preaching 
among the Jews, could not announce anv other God 
but him in whom the Jews had believed." (lb., cap. 
xii. § 6.) 4. Some of the Gnostics, especially the 
Marcionites, maintained that Paul was far superior to 
the other apostles in the knowledge of the truth — 
'•the hidden doctrine having been manifested to him 
by revelation." (Ibid., c. xiii, § 1.) They repre- 
sented the other apostles as having been entangled 
by Jewish prejudices from which he was in a great 
measure free. Marcion regarded the Gospels as ex- 
pressing the false Jewish opinions of their writers. 
But among the Gospels he conceived that there was 
ground for making a choice; and he selected for his 
own use, and that of his followers, the Gospel of 
Luke. This he further adapted to his purpose by 
rejecting from it what he viewed as conformed to 



98 THE GOSPEL RECORDS: 

those opinions. Nor did he consider Paul himself as 
wholly free from Jewish errors, but likewise struck 
out, from those of his epistles which he used, the pas- 
sages in which he thought them to be expressed. 
Sometimes, according to Irenseus, the Gnostics ap- 
parently, without making an exception in favor of 
Paul, charged the apostles generally with Jewish 
errors and ignorance concerning the higher truths 
and mysteries of religion. "All those," he says, 
"who hold pernicious doctrines have departed in 
their faith from him who is God, and think that they 
have found out more than the apostles, having dis- 
covered another God. They think that the apostles 
preached the Gospel while yet under the influence of 
Jewish prejudices, but that their own faith is purer, 
and that they are wiser than the apostles." He 
states that Marcion proceeded on these principles in 
rejecting the use of some of the books of Scripture, 
and of portions of those which he retained. (Lib. 
Ill, c. xii, § 12.) "The heretics," says Tertullian, 
"are accustomed to affirm that the apostles did not 
know all things; while, at other times, under the in- 
fluence of the same madness, they turn about and 
maintain that the apostles did indeed know all 
things, but did not teach all things to all." (Dc 
Praescr. Hser., c. xxii.) 5. Add to this the belief of 
the theosophic Gnostics in their own infallible spir- 
itual knowledge. This they conceived of as the re- 
sult of their spiritual nature. "They object to us," 
says Clement of Alexandria, "that we are of another 
nature, and unable to comprehend their peculiar doc- 
trines." (Stromat., vii, § 16.) 

After these introductory remarks we will proceed 
to the examination of the testimony of heretical 



THEIR AUTHENTICITY. 99 

■writers, as Westcott gives it in his Canon, and we 
shall find it strictly analogous to that of the Fathers 
in its progressive development. As the New Testa- 
ment recognizes the existence of parties and heresies 
in the Christian society from its first origin, so the 
earliest false teachers witness more or less clearly to 
the existence and reception of our canonical Gospels. 

SIMON MAGUS ANT) CERINTHUS. 

The heretics that arose in the apostolic age were 
Simon Magus and Cerinthus. The former seems to 
have been the first representative of the antichristian 
element of the Gentile world, the latter that of the 
antichristian element in Judaism. In the lately-dis- 
covered parts of a work of Hippolytus, a disciple of 
Irenseus, (Philosophumena, or a refutation of all her- 
esies, book VI,) there are preserved several quota- 
tions from a writing named " The Great Announce- 
ment," which contains an account of the revelation 
Simon Magus professed to be intrusted with, and 
which seems to have been compiled from his oral 
teaching by one of his immediate followers. In the 
fragments, which Hippolytus quotes of this work, 
there are co.ncidences with words recorded in the 
Gospel of Matthew. Eeference is also made to the 
First Epistle of Paul to the Corinthians in terms 
which prove that it was placed by the author on the 
same footing as the books of the Old Testament. 
"The Cerinthians," Epiphanius says, "make use of 
Matthew's Gospel, (the Gospel according to the He- 
brews,) like the Ebionites, on account of the human 

genealogy, though their copy is not entire 

The apostle Paul they entirely reject on account of 
his opposition to circumcision." But of the most 






100 THE GOSPEL RECORDS: 

importance Is the relation of Cerinthus to John. 
While we find in the New Testament no reference to 
the later developments of Gnosticism by Valentin us 
or Marcion — another proof of the authenticity of the 
apostolical writings, for if they had been written after 
the apostolical age, an entire ignoring of the heresies 
of the second century would be inexplicable — some 
of the prominent features in the false systems of 
Simon Magus and of Cerinthus are exposed in the 
Epistle to the Hebrews and in the introduction to 
John's Gospel. Nothing, indeed, can be more truly 
opposite to Cerinthianism than the theology of John. 
The character of his Gospel was evidently influenced 
by prevailing errors; though it is not a mere contro- 
versial work, we can not but feel that it was written 
to satisfy some pressing want of the age, and to meet 
some false philosophy, which had already begun to 
fashion a peculiar dialect. Cerinthus upheld a cere- 
monial system, and taught only a temporary union of 
the Logos with the man Jesus. St. John proclaimed 
that Judaism had passed away, and set forth clearly 
the manifestation of the Eternal Word in His historic 
Incarnation. The teaching of John is doubtless far 
deeper and wider than was needed to meet the errors 
of Cerinthus, but it has a natural connection with 
the period in which he lived. 

THE OPHITES. 

This sect, into which some Christian ideas were 
infused, Hyppolytus places in the age next succeed- 
ing that of the apostles. Although they are said to 
have made use of the Gospel according to the Egyp- 
tians, and of the Gospel of Thomas, the passages 
given from their books contain clear references to 



THEIR AUTHENTICITY. 101 

the Gospels of Matthew, Luke, and John, and to 
several Epistles. Irenaeus speaks of the Ophites as 
the first source of the Yalentinian school, the orig- 
inal " hydra-head from which its manifold progeny 
was derived." 

B ASILIDES. 

He stood at the head of one of the Gnostic sects, 



and lived, according to Eusebius, (Hist. Ecc, IY, 7.) 
not long after the times of the apostles. He is said 
to have been a younger cotemporary of Cerinthus, 
and a follower of Menander, who was himself the 
successor of Simon Magus. Clement of Alexandria 
and Jerome fix the period of his activity in the time 
of Hadrian, and he found a formidable antagonist in 
Agrippa. Castor. All these circumstances combine to 
place him in the generation next after the apostolic 
age, between Clement of Rome and Polycarp. Clem- 
ent of Alexandria, Origen, and Epiphanius give 
specimens of the teaching of Basilides, exactly ac- 
cordant with the more important quotations of Hip- 
polytus. The mode in which the books of the Xew 
Testament are treated in these fragments, show that 
the earliest heretics sought to recommend their doc- 
trines by forced explanations of apostolic language. 
And more than this, they contain the earliest un- 
doubted instances in which the Old and Xew Testa- 
ments are placed on the same level ; the Epistles of 
Paul are called "Scripture," and quotations from 
them are introduced by the well-known form : " It is 
written.'' Since Basilides lived on the verge of the 
apostolic times, it is, however, not surprising that he 
claimed other sources of Christian doctrine besides 
the canonical books. The belief in Divine inspira- 



102 THE GOSPEL RECORDS : 

tion was still fresh and real ; and Eusebius relates 
that he set up imaginary prophets, Barcabbas and 
Barcoph, (or Parchor,) "names to strike terror into 
the superstitious." At the same time he appealed to 
the authority of Glaucias, who is said to have been, 
like Mark, an interpreter of Peter ; he also made use 
of certain " Traditions of Matthias," which claimed 
to be grounded on private intercourse with the Sav- 
ior. The author of the Homilies on Luke,, which 
have been ascribed to Origen, speaks of a " Gospel 
according to Basilides." But there is no mention of 
it by Irenseus or by Clement of Alexandria, nor by 
Epiphanius, nor by Eusebius, nor by Theodoret. 
Why should we not have heard as much of a gospel 
written by Basilides as of the defective Gospel of 
Luke used by the Marcionites? The notion that 
Basilides wrote a gospel probably arose from the fact 
that he wrote a commentary on the Gospels. How- 
ever that may be, he admitted the historic truth of 
all the facts contained in the canonical Gospels, and 
used them as scripture. In th-e fragments of his 
writings which we find in Hippolytus, there are defi- 
nite references to the Gospels of Matthew, Luke, and 
John, as well as to several Epistles; and Bunsen is 
of opinion, "that his whole metaphysical development 
is an attempt to connect a cosmogonic system with 
John's prologue and with the person of Christ." 
(Bunsen's Hippolytus, vol. I, p. 87.) We possess in 
Basilides a witness to the existence of these Gospels 
as early as between 128 and 130 A. D. 

V ALENTINUS. 

Shortly after Basilides began to propagate his 
doctrines, another system arose at Alexandria. Its 



THEIR AUTHENTICITY. 103 

author. Valentinus — after the example of the Christian 
teachers of his age — went to Rome, which he chose 
as the center of his labors. Irenams relates, that 
"he came there during the episcopate of Hyginus, 
was at his full vigor in the time of Pius, and con- 
tinued there till the time of Anicetus."' His testi- 
mony, therefore, in point of age : is as venerable as 
that of Justin, and he is removed, by one generation 
only, from the time of John. Just as Basilides 
claimed, through Glaueius. the authority of Peter, 
Valentin us professed to follow the teaching of The- 
odas. a disciple of Paul. This circumstance is im- 
portant : for it shows that at the beginning of the 
second century, alike within and without the Church, 
the sanction of an apostle was considered to be a 
sufficient proof of Christian doctrine. The fragments 
of his writings which remain show the same natural 
and trustful use of Scripture as any other Christian 
works of the same period. He cites the Epistle to 
the Ephesians as " Scripture." and refers clearly to 
the Gospels of Matthew, Euke. and John. The Val- 
entinians. however, are said to have added a new 
gospel to the other four : " Casting aside all fear, and 
bringing forward their own compositions, they boast 
that they have more gospels than there really are. 
For they have advanced to such a pitch of daring as 
to entitle a book, which was composed by them not 
long since. ; the Gospel of Truth." though it accords 
in no respect with the Gospels of the apostles ; so 
that the Gospel, in fact, can not exist among them 
without blasphemy. For if that which is brought 
forward by them is the Gospel of Truth, and still is 
unlike those which are delivered to us by the apos- 
tles — they, who please, can learn how from the writ- 



104 THE GOSPEL RECORDS: 

ings themselves — it is shown at once that that which 
is delivered to us by the apostles is not the Gospel 
of Truth." (Iren. Adv. Hser., Ill, xi, 11, 9.) What, 
then, was this gospel ? If it had been a history of our 
Blessed Lord, and yet wholly at variance with the 
canonical Gospels, it is evident that the Yalentinians 
could not have received these — nor, indeed, any one 
of them — as they undoubtedly did. And here, then, 
a new light is thrown upon the character of some of 
the early apocryphal gospels, which has been in part 
anticipated by what was said of the gospel of Basil- 
ides. The gospel of Basilides or Valentinus con- 
tained their system of Christian doctrine, their view 
of the Gospel, philosophically, and not historically. 
The writers of these new gospels in no way necessa- 
rily interfered with the old. They sought, as far as 
we can learn, to embody their spirit and furnish a 
key to their meaning, rather than to supersede their 
use. The Valentinians had more gospels than the 
Catholic Church, since they accepted a doctrinal 
gospel. 

The titles of some of the other Gnostic gospels con- 
firm what has been said. Two are mentioned by 
Epiphanius in the account of those whom he calls 
"Gnostics," as if that were their specific name, the 
Gospel of Eve, and the Gospel of Perfection. Neither 
of these could be historic accounts of the life of 
Christ, and the slight description of their character 
which he adds, illustrates the wide use of the word 
"gospel." The first was an elementary account of 
Gnosticism, " based on foolish visions and testimo- 
nies," called by the name of Eve, as though it had 
been revealed to her by the serpent. The second was 
"a seductive composition." (Epiph. Haer., xxvi, 2.) 



THEIR AUTHENTICITY. 105 

The analogy of the title of this - Gospel of Perfection" 
leaves little doubt as to the character of the '- Gospel 
of Truth." Puritan theology can furnish numerous 
similar titles. And the partial currency of such a 
book among the Valentinians offers not the slightest 
presumption against their agreement with catholic 
Christians on the exclusive claims of the four Gospels 
as records of Christ's life. These they took as the 
basis of their speculations ; and by the heljD of com- 
mentaries endeavored to extract from them the prin- 
ciples which they maintained. 

HERACLEON. 

Origen says that " he was reported to have been a 
familiar friend of Yalentinus," (Comm. in Joan., torn. 
ii, § 8.) Assuming this statement to be true, his 
writings can not well date later than the first half of 
the second century; and he claims the title of the 
first commentator on the Xew Testament. Frag- 
ments of his commentaries on the Gospels of Luke 
and John have been preserved by Clement of Alex- 
andria and Orio-en. The fragments contain allusions 
to the Gospel of Matthew, to the Epistles of Paul to 
the Romans, and Corinthians. (I.) and to the Second 
Epistle to Timothy: but the character of the Com- 
mentary itself is the most striking testimony to the 
estimation in which the apostolic writings were held. 
The sense of the inspiration of the Evangelists — of 
some providential guidance by which they were led 
to select each fact in their history, and each word in 
their narrative — is not more complete in Origen. 
The first commentary on the New Testament exhibits 
the application of the same laws to its interpretation 
as were employed in the Old Testament. The slight- 



106 THE GOSPEL RECORDS: 

est variation of language was held to be significant. 
Numbers were supposed to conceal a hidden truth. 
The whole record was found to be pregnant with 
spiritual meaning, conveyed by the teaching of 
events in themselves real and instructive. It appears, 
also, that differences between the Gospels were felt, 
and an attempt made to reconcile them, (Orig. in 
Joan., x, § 21 ;) and it must be noticed that authori- 
tative spiritual teaching was not limited to our 
Lord's own words, but the remarks of the Evangelist 
also were received as possessing an inherent weight. 
The introduction of commentaries implies the strong- 
est belief in the authenticity and authority of the 
New Testament Scriptures ; and this belief becomes 
more important when we notice the source from 
which they were derived. They took their rise 
among heretics, and not among catholic Christians. 
Just as the earliest Fathers applied themselves to the 
Old Testament, to bring out its real harmony with 
the Gospel, heretics endeavored to reconcile the Gos- 
pel with their own systems. Commentaries were 
made where the want for them was pressing. But 
unless the Gospels had been generally accepted, the 
need for such works would not have been felt. He- 
racleon was forced to turn and modify much that he 
found in John, which he would not have done if the 
book had not been raised above all doubt. And his 
evidence is the more valuable because it appears that 
he had studied the history of the apostles. 

PTOLEMJEUS. 

Ptolemseus, like Heracleon, was a disciple of Yalen- 
tinus. Epiphanius has preserved an important letter 
which Ptolemseus addressed to an "honorable pister 



THEIR AUTHENTICITY. 107 

Flora," in which he maintains the imperfect charac- 
ter of the Law. In proof of this doctrine he quoted 
words of our Lord recorded by Matthew, the pro- 
logue to John's Gospel, and passages from Paul's 
Epistles to the Eomans, Corinthians, (I,) and Ephe- 
sians. Many other fragments of the teachings, if not 
of the books, of Ptolemseus have been preserved by 
Irenseus, (Adv. User., I, lsqq; and though they are 
full of forced explanations of Scripture, they recog- 
nize, even in their wildest theories, the importance 
of every detail or doctrine. He found support for 
his doctrine in the parables, the miracles, and the 
facts of our Lord's life, as well as in the teaching of 
the apostles. In the course of the exposition of his 
system quotations occur from the four Gospels, and 
from the Epistles of Paul to the Eomans, Corinth- 
ians, (I,) Galatians, Ephesians, and Colossians. 

THE MARCOSIANS. 

" The Marcosians," Irenseus writes, " introduce with 
subtilty an unspeakable multitude of apocryphal and 
spurious writings, (jpa<pa{,) which they forged them- 
selves to confound the foolish and those who know 
not the Scriptures (ypdfifiara) of truth." (Adv. Hser., 
I, xx, 1.) In the absence of further evidence, it is 
impossible to pronounce exactly on the character of 
these books; it is sufficient that they did not supplant 
the canonical Scriptures. At the same time their ap- 
pearance in this connection is not without import- 
ance. Marcus, the founder of the sect, was probably 
a native of Syria; and Syria, it is well known, was 
fertile in those religious tales which are raised to 
too. great importance by the title of gospels. What- 
ever the apocryphal writings may have been, the 



108 THE GOSPEL RECORDS: 

words of Irenseus show that they were easily distin- 
guishable from Holy Scripture; and the Marcosians 
themselves bear witness to the familiar use of our 
Gospels. The formularies which Marcus instituted 
contain references to the Gospel of Matthew, and 
perhaps to the Epistle to the Ephesians, (Adv. Hssr., 
I, xiii, 3.) The teaching of his followers offers coinci- 
dences with all four Gospels. These Gospel quota- 
tions present various remarkable readings, but there 
is no reason to suppose that they were borrowed 
from any other source than the canonical books. 
Irenseus evidently considered that they were taken 
thence ; and while he accuses the Marcosians of 
"adapting" certain passages of the Gospels to their 
views, the connection shows that they tampered with 
the interpretation and not with the text. 

m a R c i o n . 

Hitherto the testimony of heretical writers to the 
New Testament has been confined to the recognition 
of detached parts, by casual quotations or character- 
istic types of doctrine. Marcion, on the contrary, 
fixed a definite collection of apostolic books as the 
foundation of his system. Paul only, according to 
him, was the true apostle ; and Pauline writings 
alone were admitted into his canon. This was di- 
vided into two parts : " The Gospel " and " The Apos- 
tolicon." The Gospel was a recension of Luke, with 
numerous omissions and variations from the received 
text. The Apostolicon contained ten epistles of Paul, 
excluding the pastoral epistles and that to the He- 
brews. Tertullian and Bpiphanius agree in affirming 
that Marcion altered the text of the books which he 
received to suit his own views ; and they quote many 



THEIR AUTHENTICITY. 109 

various readings in support of their assertion. Those 
which occur in the Epistles are certainly insufficient 
to prove the point. With the Gospel the case was 
different. The influence of oral tradition, by the 
form and use of the written Gospels, was of long- 
continuance. The personality of their authors was, 
in some measure, obscured by the character of their 
work. The Gospel was felt to be Christ's Gospel — 
the name which Marcion ventured to apply to his 
own — and not the particular narration of any Evan- 
gelist. And such considerations as these will ex- 
plain, though they did not justify, the liberty which 
Marcion allowed himself in dealing with the text of 
Luke. There can be no doubt that Luke's narrative 
lay at the basis of his Gospel ; but it is not equally 
clear that all the changes which were introduced 
into it were due to Marcion himself. Some of the 
omissions can be explained at once by his peculiar 
doctrines, but others are unlike arbitrary corrections, 
and must be considered as various readings of the 
greatest interest, dating, as they do, from a time an- 
terior to all other authorities in our possession. 

T ATI AN. 

The history of Tatian throws an important light 
on that of Marcion. Both were naturally restive, in- 
quisitive, impetuous. They were subject to the same 
influences, and were for a while, probably, resident in 
the same city. (Tat. ad Gr., 18; Just. Ap., i, 26.) 
Both remained for some time within the Catholic 
Church, and then sought the satisfaction of their pe- 
culiar wants in a system of stricter discipline and 
sterner logic. Both abandoned the received canon 
of Scripture ; and together they go far to witness to 



110 THE GOSPEL RECORDS: 

its integrity. While they witness to the existence of 
a critical spirit among Christians of the second cen- 
tury, they point to a Catholic Church as the one 
center from which their systems diverged. 

The earliest mention of the Diatessaron of Tatian 
is in Eusebius. "Tatian," he says, "the former 
leader of the Encratites, having put together, in 
some strange fashion, a combination and collection 
of the Gospels, gave this name of the Diatessaron, and 
the work is still partially current." The words evi- 
dently imply that the canonical Gospels formed the 
basis of Tatian's Harmony. The next testimony is 
that of Epiphanius, who writes that " Tatian is said 
to have been the author of the Harmony of the four 
Gospels, which some call the Gospel according to the 
Hebrews." (Epiph. Hser., xlvi, 1.) The express 
mention of the four Gospels is important as fixing 
the meaning of the original titles. Not long after- 
ward, Theodoret gives a more exact account of the 
character and common use of the book. " Tatian 
also composed the gospel called 'Diatessaron,' and 
all the other passages which show that Christ was 
born of David according to the flesh. This was used 
not only by the members of his own party, but even 
by those who followed the Apostolic doctrine, as 
they did not perceive the evil design of the compo- 
sition, but used the book in their simplicity for its 
conciseness. And I found also myself more than two 
hundred such books in our Churches, (in Syria,) 
which had been received with respect; and having 
gathered all together, I caused them to be laid aside, 
and introduced in their place the Gospels of the four 
Evangelists." (Theod. Hser., lib. I, 20.) Not only, 
then, was the Diatessaron grounded on the four can- 



THEIR AUTHENTICITY. Ill 

onical Gospels, but in its general form it was so or- 
thodox as to enjoy a wide ecclesiastical popularity. 
The heretical character of the book was not evident 
upon the surface of it, and consisted rather in faults 
of defect than in erroneous teaching. Theodoret had 
certainly examined it, and he, like earlier writers, 
regarded it as a compilation from the four Gospels. 
He speaks of omissions which were, in part at least, 
natural in a Harmony, but notices no such apocry- 
phal additions as would have found place in any 
gospel not derived from canonical sources. 

THE APOCRYPHA OF THE NEW TESTAMENT. 

In the preceding quotations from the heretical 
writings various gospels have been referred to and 
characterized, such as the Gospel according to the 
Hebrews,* the Ebionite Gospel, the Gospel of Corinth ; 

* In order to enable the reader to make a comparison between the Gospel ac- 
cording to the Hebrews and the Gospel of Matthew, we will copy a few quota- 
tions. The following quotation is made by Origen, (Comm. on Matt., torn. 
XVI, |14:) 

"Another rich man said to him, Master, what good tiling shall I do to live? 
He said to him : Fulfill the law and the prophets. He answered him: I have 
fulfilled them. He said to him : Go, sell all that thou possessest and distribute 
to the poor, and come, follow me. But the rich man began to scratch his head, 
and it did not please him. And the Lord said to him : How sayest thou, I have 
fulfilled the law and the prophets, since it is written in the law, thou shalt love 
thy neighbor as thyself; and lo ! many of thy brethren, sons of Abraham, are 
clothed in filth, dying of hunger ; and thy house is full of many goods, and 
nothing at all goes out of it to them ! And he turned and said to Simon, his 
disciple, who was sitting by him : Simon, son of Jonas, it is easier for a camel 
to enter the eye of a needle than for a rich man to enter into the kingdom of 
heaven." 

In Jerome we find the following quotations: 

"So the mother of the Lord, and his brethren said to him : John the Baptist 
is baptizing for the remission of sins; let us go and be baptized by him. But 
he said to them : What sin have I committed that I should go and be baptized 
by him ? Unless, perchance, this very word which I have spoken is (a sin of) 
ignorance." (Hieron. Adv. Pelag., Ill, 2.) 

" Now, it came to pass when the Lord had come up out of the water, the Holy 
Spirit with full stream came down and rested upon him, and said to him : My 



112 THE GOSPEL RECORDS: 

all of which were falsifications and mutilations of a 
translation of the original Greek Gospel of Matthew 
into Aramaic Hebrew, or such as the mutilated edi- 
tion of Luke's Gospel by Marcion. 

Of a somewhat different character is the so-called 
" Gospel according to the Egyptians." On this Mr. 
Norton remarks : " It was an anonymous book ex- 
tant in the second century, and probably written in 
Egypt, in the dark and mystical style that prevailed 
in that country. In judging of its importance we 
must compare the writers who recognize its existence 
with the far greater number to whom it was un- 
known, or who were not led by any circumstance to 
mention it. It was a book of which we should have 
been ignorant, but for a few incidental notices af- 
forded by writers, none of whom give evidence of 
having seen it. Neither Clement nor any other 
writer speaks of it as a Gnostic gospel. The Gnos- 

Son, in all the prophets I was waiting for thee, that thou shouldest come, and I 
might rest in thee. For thou art my rest ; thou art my first-horn Son, who 
reignest forever." (Hieron. in Isaiah, IV, xi, 2.) 

"Now the Lord, when he had given the cloth to the servant of the priest, 
went to James and appeared to him. For James had taken an oath that he 
would not eat bread from that hour on which he had drunk the cup of the Lord, 
till he saw him risen from the dead. Again, a little afterward, the Lord says, 
Bring a table and bread. Immediately, it is added, he took bread, and blessed, 
and brake, and gave it to James the Just, and said to him, My brother, eat 
thy bread, for the Son of man has risen from the dead." (Hieron. de Vir., 
Illust., II.) 

" In the Gospel which the Nazarenes and Ebionites use," says Jerome, on 
Matt, xii, 13, " the man with the withered hand is described as a mason, who 
sought the help of Christ with words to this effect : I was a mason, seeking a 
livelihood by the labor of my hand. I pray thee, Jesus, to restore to me my 
health, that I may not beg my bread in disgrace." 

These extracts show us clearly how little any other age than that of the 
apostles was able to originate or even to reproduce the simple grandeur of In- 
spired language, and what might have been expected from writings founded on 
tradition, even when shaped after an apostolic pattern. In no sense can the 
apocryphal gospels of the Judaizing sects bear any comparison with ours, 
neither in form nor in matter. They are destitute of spirit, life, good taste, 
sublimity, and authority. 



THEIR AUTHENTICITY. 113 

tics did not appeal to it in support of their funda- 
mental doctrines ; for had they done so, we should 
have been fully informed of the fact. The only ar- 
gument for believing it to have been a history of 
Christ's ministry is, that it contained a narrative of 
a pretended conversation of Christ with Salome, but 
that might as well have been inserted in a merely 
doctrinal book. And if the book had been a his- 
torical gospel, the representation of Christ — to judge 
from the words ascribed to him in the conversation 
with Salome — must have been so foreign in its char- 
acter from that in our Gospels, that it could not 
have existed in the last half of the second century 
without having been an object of far greater atten- 
tion than what this book received." 

The same may be said concerning the so-called 
" Gospel according to Peter." From the account 
which Serapion, Bishop of Antioch about the close of 
the second century, gives of it, as quoted by Euse- 
bius, (Hist. Bccl.j li*\ YI, c. xii,) it appears clearly 
that it did not pretend to be a history of Christian- 
ity. Had this been the case, Serapion could not 
have regarded it with such indifference as he first 
manifested. It is impossible that the existence of 
such a history should not have been notorious, that 
it should not have been a frequent subject of remark. 
When we recollect the abundant notices of Marcion's 
Gospel, it can not be believed that there was another 
historical book extant among the heretics, of which 
the notices are so scanty, and which is never men- 
tioned as a historical book. It belongs to the same 
class of writings as the Gospel of Basilides, the tra- 
ditions of Matthias, the Gospel according to Thomas, 

the True Gospel, the Gospel of Eve, the Gospel of 

10 



114 THE GOSPEL RECORDS: 

Perfection, which, as we remarked above, were doc- 
trinal tracts, not historical accounts of Christ's min- 
istry ; or, at least ; so very obscure ones, that no sect 
for a moment pretended to set them up in opposition 
to our canonical Gospels. Norton remarks very fitly : 
" About the beginning of the last century a manu- 
script was made known of a gospel ascribed to Bar- 
nabas, in the Italian language, but supposed to be 
translated from the Arabic. It is the work of a Mo- 
hammedan, or a work interpolated by a Moham- 
medan. Much more has been written about this book 
than all that is to be found in the Christian writers 
of the first three centuries concerning apocryphal 
gospels ; yet it is a book of which, probably, few of 
my readers have ever heard. It is easy to apply 
this fact to assist ourselves in judging of the import- 
ance to be attached to the notices of apocryphal gos- 
pels found in the Fathers." ISTor would we have de- 
voted so much attention to the consideration of these 
apocryphal gospels, had not the latest German school 
of destructive criticism set up the monstrous claim, 
that the Ebionitic and Gnostic Gospels were the original 
histories of our Lord, and our canonical Gospels later 
productions, written for the express purpose to improve 
upon them! To critics who can maintain that the 
Gospel according to the Hebrews or the Gospel of 
Marcion are respectively the originals of Matthew 
and Luke, it is sufficient to apply the word of the 
apostle: "Professing themselves to be wise, they be- 
came fools." The authors of our four canonical 
Gospels, who stood infinitely above all the authors of 
the second century, are assumed to have written to- 
ward the close of that century, under the fictitious 
names of Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John, and to 



THEIR AUTHENTICITY. 115 

have remained undiscovered, although they suc- 
ceeded in revolutionizing the whole Christian litera- 
ture of that age, and substituting their products in 
the place of the original histories of Christ's ministry, 
so that none of the critical writers at the close of the 
second century could discover the least trace of the 
unheard-of legerdemain ! 

From all the above-named productions, bearing 
the name of Gospels, must be distinguished some 
books of high antiquity, which were not imitations 
of the canonical Gospels, but aimed to supplement 
the narratives concerning the Savior, Mary and Jo- 
seph, and the apostles. They bore on their face, 
falsely, the names of apostles or other men highly 
esteemed in the Church. But, though they were 
esteemed and used by many persons in early an- 
tiquity, when men did not so readily know how to 
distinguish counterfeits from that which was gen- 
uine and true, they were repudiated by the Church. 
These are the New Testament Apocrypha, in the proper 
sense of the word, and they were also as strong wit- 
nesses for the early acceptance of our Gospels.. It is 
not necessary to mention more than the two oldest 
ones, the so-called Gospel of James, and the Acts of 
Pilate. Tischendorf contends that both were com- 
posed in the first ten years of the second century, 
and makes the following argument : 

" In his work of the year 138, as well as in his 
Dialogue, written somewhat later, Justin makes sev- 
eral statements touching the birth of Jesus, the origin 
of which can be traced only to the Gospel of James. 
Justin relates that the birth of Jesus took place in a 
grotto at Bethlehem. Such a statement is found only 
in the Gospel of James. In the annunciation to 



116 THE GOSPEL RECORDS : 

Mary, Justin concludes with the words : c And thou 
shalt call his name Jesus,' adding directly to them, 
'for he shall save the people from their sins.' So 
precisely does it stand in the Gospel of James. In 
Matthew, on the other hand, the words are spoken to 
Joseph, and in Luke the last clause is wanting alto- 
gether. The dependence of Justin upon the book of 
James admits of no objection. Not only does Origen, 
after the expiration of the second century, make 
mention of the Book of James; not only is his con- 
stant subsequent use of it beyond a doubt, we have 
now, in addition, more than fifty manuscripts of 
the Greek text, written from the ninth century on- 
ward — nay, even a Syriac manuscript of the sixth 
century. It is only the desire to evade the conclu- 
sion that even Justin employed it, which prompts 
men to lose themselves in the realm of idle con- 
jectures. 

" But now the work named after James stands in 
such a relation to our Gospels that they must have 
been in long and general use before the fictitious 
writing was produced. Matthew and Luke had as- 
serted that Mary was a virgin mother ; still there 
were sects, diverging from the Church doctrine, who 
fancied Jesus to be the son of Joseph and Mary. 
That the brethren of Jesus are mentioned in the Gos- 
pels seemed, at least, to prove a later marriage of Jo- 
seph and Mary. Learned Jews threw suspicion upon 
the correctness of the translation of the prophetic 
passage touching the Yirgin in Matthew i, 23 ; nay, 
both Jews and heathen poured contempt and calumny 
upon the Son of the Yirgin. This took place in the 
first half of the second century, and the Gospel of 
James was composed to meet it. In this it was 



THEIR AUTHENTICITY. 117 

shown, in a historical form. that, from her birth on- 
ward, Mary had . always maintained the highest 
character ; that the virgin-birth was a matter of dem- 
onstration, and that she sustained a relation to Jo- 
seph far above that of marriage. If this work really 
falls into the first decade of years in the second 
century, the composition of the Gospels of Matthew 
and Luke, to which, as a pretended supplement, it 
refers, must certainly fall into the last ten years of 
the first century. 

" The case- is similar with the Acts of Pilate, save 
that this work refers as distinctly to John as to the 
first Gospels. For this production, also. Justin is our 
oldest guarantee. It professes to have been written 
under Pilate, and by the allegation of wonderful oc- 
currences before, during, and after the crucifixion, to 
deliver a strong testimony for the divinity of Christ. 
That it must have originated with a Christian hand, 
engaged in a work of pious fraud, was indeed not 
discovered by Justin, nor was it detected by Tertul- 
lian and others. On the contrary, in bis work of A. 
D. 138, Justin appeals to it twice. First, he men- 
tions the prophecies touching the events heralding 
the crucifixion, (Isa. lxv, 2, and lviii, 2 Ps. xxi, 16, 
18,) and says: ; That they really occurred, you may 
learn from the Acts composed under Pontius Pilate. 1 
Then, again, he appeals to the miraculous cures of 
Jesus, predicted by Isaiah, (xxxv, 1, 6,) and adds: 
1 That Jesus really did these things, you may learn 
from the Acts composed under Pontius Pilate.' The 
testimony of Tertullian is rendered in still more 
ample terms, (Apologetic, 21) for he says that Jesus, 
from envy, was delivered by the Jewish scribes to 
Pilate, and by him, yielding to the pressure of the 



118 THE GOSPEL RECORDS I 

accusers, delivered to crucifixion; that, hanging upon 
the cross, with a loud cry, he yielded up the ghost; 
that, at the same moment, the full day was inter- 
rupted by the obscuration of the sun ; that, as Jesus 
had predicted his resurrection, a watch of soldiers 
was set at the grave to prevent the abstraction of the 
corpse by the disciples ; but that upon the third day 
the earth suddenly quaked, and the stone which had 
been rolled before the grave was removed; that 
nothing but grave-clothes was found in the grave; 
that a report was spread abroad by the authorities 
that the disciples had taken the body ; but that Jesus 
himself spent forty days with his disciples, in Galilee, 
instructing them, and that after he had charged them 
with the duty of preaching, he was transported to 
heaven in a cloud. This full report Tertullian con- 
cludes with the words: 'All this did Pilate himself, 
forced by conscience to become a Christian, report of 
Christ to the reigning Emperor, Tiberius.' 

" Such are the testimonies of Justin and Tertullian 
touching the Acts of Pilate. A work answering to 
these quotations, and bearing also the same title as 
in Justin, we possess at present, in many ancient 
Greek, Latin, and other original manuscript docu- 
ments. Is it the same which was read by Justin and 
Tertullian? The affirmative answer has been re- 
sisted in many ways. It has been said that the old 
work itself is lost, and that the extant one is only 
an imitation of it. Has this opinion any solid founda- 
tion ? Ey no means. True, indeed, the oldest text, 
when subsequently transcribed, was in many passages 
altered, as touching the expression ; nay, more, in the 
middle ages, the Latins exchanged the title, The 
Acts of Pilate, for the title, ' The Gospel of Nicode- 



THEIR AUTHENTICITY. 119 

mus,' and added a preface. We have, also, in con- 
nection with the elder Greek text, a more modern 
revision, but, upon the whole, we have decisive 
grounds for believing that our Acts of Pilate, with 
its elder text, in the main, really contains the work 
used by Justin and Tertullian. By our own re- 
searches in the European libraries, important proofs 
of this position have been discovered ; namely, a 
manuscript written in the Egyptian language, on 
paper of the oldest kind, (papyrus.) of the fifth cen- 
tury; and, also, a parchment manuscript, with the 
Latin text, of the same century, which, although 
washed out about a thousand years ago, and re- 
placed by a new inscription upon the parchment, 
thus cleansed, remaining, for good eyes, still legible. 
These two ancient documents, with an Egyptian and 
a Latin translation, insure the high antiquity of our 
Greek text, from which they were derived ; for if, 
even in the fifth century, there existed such transla- 
tions, the work itself, as highly esteemed, must have 
existed long before. But we must present the matter 
with still greater exactness. The primitive work 
was very precious to Christians. The example both 
of Justin and Tertullian proves it. Justin makes his 
appeal to the Koman Caesar, upon this basis, as if it 
were a work of decisive weight. This high estima- 
tion of it naturally continued. Eusebius and Epiph- 
anius prove this, as touching the fourth century. 
We learn from the former that, at the beginning of 
the fourth century, the Emperor Maximin, who was 
bitterly hostile to Christianity, caused spurious Acts 
of Pilate, full of scoffing and calumny, to be pub- 
lished, and even to be distributed in the schools, 
plainly in order to suppress and counteract the work 



120 THE GOSPEL RECORDS : 

held in such esteem by the Christians. In this state 
of facts, is it in the smallest degree credible, that 
precisely at this period, from the fourth or fifth cen- 
tury forward, the old work, so remarkably servicea- 
ble, should have been entirely revised ; and that 
precisely at this period, the ancient and famous work 
itself having entirely disappeared, the revision should 
have been every-where distributed — should have been 
translated and preserved to our day? The supposi- 
tion is in flat contradiction to a sound judgment. It 
contradicts the work itself as we have it, inasmuch 
as it unites a very peculiar freedom of narrative 
with a dependence upon the Gospels. Our Acts of 
Pilate not only presuj>poses the narratives of the 
first three Gospels, but also absolutely and very espe- 
cially the Gospel of John. For while its report of 
the crucifixion and resurrection connects itself with 
the first, that of the trial, in its entire complexion, 
depends upon the narrative of John. What is the 
inference as touching our question ? If the so-called 
Acts of Pilate , for the reason that Justin, as early as 
the year 138, so earnestly emphasizes its value, must 
be admitted to have been written at the beginning 
of the second century, then the Gospel of John and 
the rest, since they are so completely presupposed, 
must be admitted to have been written in the first 
century." 

§ 13. The Testimonies of Heathen Adversaries. 

To the external evidences for the authenticity of 
the Gospels is to be added the testimony of avowed 
enemies. The learned Lardner says in his collection 
of Jewish and heathen testimonies, (on the New Test- 
ament canon:) "Of all the testimonies on the writ- 



THEIR AUTHENTICITY. 121 

ino-s of the New Testament, which we meet with in 
the first centuries of the Christian era, none are 
weightier and more important than those of the 
[earned philosophers who wrote against Christianity; 
namely, of Celsus, in the second. Porphyry, in the 
third, and Julian the Apostate, in the fourth cen- 
tury." 

Celsus, a philosopher, who flourished about 176 A. 
D., proposed to himself the formal task of setting 
forth how dangerous the Christian religion would 
prove to the State. His learned argument against 
the Christians is the first heathen testimony as to the 
existence of New Testament writings. This work, en- 
titled " The True Word/' has unfortunately been lost, 
but in Origen's reply to it there are more copious 
extracts from it than from any other book of an- 
tiquity that has been lost. In these extracts we have 
almost an abridgment of the Gospel history. They 
contain about eighty quotations from the Xew Test- 
ament, which amply prove that Celsus was acquainted 
with the writings of Matthew. Luke, and John, and 
some of the Epistles of Paul. He mentions nearly 
all the leading events in the life of Christ from his 
birth to his death ; of course, only in order to make 
them ridiculous. His whole argument, however, is 
based on the admission that the writings of the 
Christians were the productions of their professed 
authors, though he refers to some alterations of the 
Gospels made by the Marcionites and other heretics. 
From the testimony, then, of this most malignant 
enemy of the Christian religion, who was, at the 
same time, a man of considerable learning: and influ- 
ence, it appears, that the writings of the Evangelists 

existed in his time, the first period succeeding the 

11 



122 THE GOSPEL RECORDS: 

apostolic age, and that these writings were then 
acknowledged, even by enemies, to be authentic. 

The next witness is Porphyry, who was born 230 
A. D., and wrote against Christianity about 270 A. 
D. From the few fragments left of this work it 
appears that he was acquainted with our Gospels and 
some other of the New Testament writings. This 
work enjoyed a high reputation among the heathen, 
and Eusebius and other learned Christians deemed it 
worth their while to refute it. In what we have left 
of it there are direct references to the Gospels of 
Matthew, Mark, and John, the Acts, and the Epistles 
to the Galatians. Speaking of the Christians, he calls 
Matthew their Evangelist. This man was every way 
qualified, both by education and his position in soci- 
ety, to find out whether the New Testament writings 
were authentic, or whether, after the death of the 
apostles and Evangelists, spurious works were, as 
their writings, palmed upon the Christians. But we 
discover not even a hint at a suspicion of this kind; 
yea, Porphyry appears to have had no doubt what- 
ever as to the authenticity of these writings. From 
the attempt of this ingenious writer that the book of 
Daniel was an ex post facto prophecy, we see how 
well he knew to estimate an argument against the 
authenticity of a book of the New Testament, and 
how eagerly he would have made use of it against 
the Christians, if he had had but the least data for 
forming one. 

One hundred years after Porphyry, flourished the 
Emperor Julian, (A. D. 331-363,) surnamed the 
Apostate, from his renunciation of Christianity after 
he mounted the imperial throne. Though he resorted 
to the most artful political means for undermining' 



THEIR AUTHENTICITY. 123 ' 

Christianity, yet. as a writer against it, he was every 
way inferior to Porphyry. Erom various extracts of 
his work against the Christians, transcribed by Je- 
rome and Cyril, it is evident that he did not deny 
the truth of the G-ospel history, as a history ; though 
he denied the Divinity of Jesus Christ asserted in 
the writings of the Evangelists, he acknowledged the 
principal facts in the Gospels, as well as the miracles 
of our Savior and his apostles. Referring to the dif- 
ference between the genealogies recorded by Matthew 
and Luke, he noticed them by name, and recited the 
sayings of Christ in the very words of the Evangel- 
ists. He also bore testimony to the GosjDel of John 
being composed later than the other Evangelists, and 
at a time when great numbers were converted to the 
Christian faith both in Italy and Greece ; and alluded 
oftener than once to facts recorded in the Acts of the 
Apostles. By thus quoting the four Gospels and Acts 
of the Apostles, and by quoting no other books, Ju- 
lian shows that these were the only historical books 
received by the Christians as of authority, and as 
containing authentic memoirs of Jesus Christ and 
his apostles, together with the doctrines taught by 
them. But Julian's testimony does something more 
than represent the judgment of the Christian Church 
in his time ; it discovers also his own. He himself 
expressly states the early date of these records ; he 
calls them by the names which they now bear. He 
all along supposes, he no where attempts to question, 
their genuineness or authenticity; nor does he give 
even the slightest intimation that he suspected the 
whole or any part of them to be forgeries. 

We have seen that none of these avowed enemies 
of Christianity has expressed the least suspicion aa 



124 THE GOSPEL RECORDS: 

to the authenticity of the "New Testament writings, 
and we would ask, in conclusion, who will deny that 
in the writings of a Celsus, Porphyry, and Julian, all 
of whom were learned men and zealous adversaries 
and persecutors of the Christians, and whose testimo- 
nies cover the period from 176 to 361 of the Christian 
era, every reasonable demand of testimony borne by 
enemies is fully met, and that this testimony, in the 
wise providence of God, makes the external evidence 
for the Gospel history as complete as it possibly can 
be from the nature of the case ? 



THEIR AUTHENTICITY. 125 



CHAPTER II. 

THE INTERNAL EVIDENCES. 

§ 14. The Peculiar Dialect of Greek in which the Evan- 
gelists have Written. 

As we remarked in § 5, that some arguments for 
the genuineness or integrity of the Sacred Text were, 
at the same time, arguments for the authenticity of 
the records, so we can not entirely separate the inter- 
nal evidences for the authenticity from the argu- 
ments for the credibility or historic verity of the 
Gospel Eecords, which will be the subject of investi- 
gation in our next Part. In the case of such com- 
positions as the Gospels, the proof of their having 
been written by apostles, and by those who received 
their accounts immediately from the apostles, is at 
the same time, as we shall further show in the next 
Part, the proof of their historic verity. But, though 
the arguments for their authenticity and their cred- 
ibility are thus intimately blended together, and 
though the ultimate purpose of both is the same, it 
is, nevertheless, desirable to consider the former sep- 
arately, and simply with reference to their bearing 
upon the question of authenticity. They will thus 
form a natural transition and proper introduction to 
Part III. 

The Greek language, in which the New Testament 
writings originally appeared — as is universally ad- 



126 THE GOSPEL RECORDS: 

mitted, with the exception of the Gospel of Matthew, 
and the Epistle to the Hebrews* — is not the classical 
Greek, such as was written by Plato, Aristotle, and 
other eminent Greek writers. Had the Evangelists 
and apostles written in pure, elegant, classical Greek, 
thoughtful minds would have found considerable dif- 
ficulty in believing them to be the authors of those 
productions, and we should lack one important evi- 
dence of the authenticity of New Testament Scrip- 
ture — its being written in the style natural to the 
persons by whom, and to the age in which it was 
produced. 

The basis of the New Testament Greek is the com- 
mon or Hellenic dialect — the name given to that 
form of the Greek language which came into general 
use after the Macedonian conquest. It was called 
common, because it originated in a sort of fusion of 
the particular dialects which had prevailed in earlier 
times; and this fusion of dialects had its origin 
chiefly from the fusion of the several States of Greece 
into the one great Macedonian Empire. In this fu- 
sion of dialects, however, the Attic still prevailed as 
the model form of the Greek language. This com- 
mon dialect we find in the New Testament writ- 
ings — in some of them to a greater extent than in 
others — intermixed with the free and frequent use of 
forms derived from the Aramaic or Syro-Chaldaic 
dialect of the Hebrew language, which had become 
the vernacular language of the Jewish people in the 

* The Epistle to the Hehrews is now held, by all men of competent learning;, 
to have been originally composed in Greek. And as to the Gospel of Matthew, 
though the opinions of the learned are still divided, yet the conviction has of late 
been growing in favor of the proper originality of the present form, which was 
certainly in current use before the close of the apostolic age. (Fairbairn's 
Hermeneutical Manual.) 



THEIR AUTHENTICITY. 127 

time of the Savior. This Hebraistic influence* in the 
style of the New Testament writers appears, as Fair- 
bairn shows by many examples, 1, in the various feat- 
ures of grammatical ■construction peculiar to the He- 
brew language, as, (1,) in the more frequent use of the 

-Against the frequent misuse of the so-called Hebraisms in the interpretation 
of the New Testament, Fairfyairn, in his Hermeneutical Manual, has very justly- 
protested, showing, in the first place, that they are not nearly so numerous as 
they were at one time represented to be. They occur only so far as rendered 
necessary by the circumstances of the writers. Though the Greek syntax dif- 
fers in many things from the Hebrew, we find the New Testament writers ac- 
commodating themselves far more to the foreign idiom than has been generally 
allowed; as, for instance, in the discriminating use of the aorist and perfect 
tenses — the aorist as denoting the historic past, and the perfect as denoting the 
past in its relation to the present, the past continuing with its effects and con- 
sequences to the present. John carefully observes this distinction when he says, 
\c. i, 3:) eyevero ovSe iv 6 yiyovev, that is, nothing whatever that has been made, 
and is still in being, was made without Him. So, also, in Colossians i, 1G ; iii, 3. 
In the second place, we should beware not to attach arbitrary meanings to the 
real Hebraisms which we find in the New Testament, as if the Hebrews had 
contravened the laws of all human language. For a long time the opinion was 
prevailing among commentators and lexicographers, that the prepositions, 
when handled by i> Hellenistic Jew, might express almost any relation what- 
ever. So Schleusner assigns to the preposition eis twenty-four, and to iv thirty 
distinct uses and meanings. In a few instances, even the authorized English 
version and that of Luther have suffered from the too prevalent notion of He- 
braistic laxity. Thus, in the prayer of the converted malefactor, (Luke, xxiii, 
42:) "Kemember me when thou comest kv rfj jScuriAeta aov " — not into thy king- 
dom, which might seem to point to the glory into which the Lord was presently 
going to enter, but in thy kingdom ; namely, when the time comes for thee 
to take to thyself thy great power, and to reign among men ; for this future 
manifestation of glory was undoubtedly what the faith of the penitent man 
anticipated and sought to share in, not the glory which lay within the vail, 
which only the answer of Christ brought within the ken of his spiritual vision. 
From the real or alleged Hebraisms of the New Testament we must distin- 
guish a class of expressions not in themselves absolutely new, but still fraught 
with an import which could not attach to them as used by any heathen writer, 
nor even in the production of any Greek-speaking Jew prior to the birth of 
Christ. With the marvelous events of the Gospel age, old things passed away, 
all things became new ; and the change which took place in the Divine dispen- 
sation could not fail to impress itself on those words and forms of expression 
which bore respect to what had then for the first time come properly into being. 
We refer to such terms as Aoyos, (word,) ^acnXeia rou ©eou, (kingdom of God,) 
aiiov i*£h\<x>v, (world to come,) SiKatoavvri, (righteousness,) £a>7j, (life,) davaros, 
(death,) x<*p<-?, (grace,) etc. In so far as these terms embodied the distinctive 
facts or principles of Christianity, their former and common usage could only 
in part exhibit the sense now acquired by them ; for the full depth and compass 
of meaning belonging to them in their new application, we must look to the 
New Testament itself, comparing one passage with another, and viewing the 
language used in the light of the great things which it brings to our apprehension* 



128 THE GOSPEL RECORDS: 

prepositions for marking relations, which were won* 
to be indicated in pure Greek by means of cases; 
(2,) in the paucity of conjunctions which existed in 
the Hebrew, while the Greek possessed a great 
abundance — of which, however, the New Testament 
writers did not avail themselves. (3.) A further 
Hebraistic turn appears in the frequent use of the 
genitive pronouns instead of the possessives. This 
naturally arose from the inspired writers being used 
to the Hebrew suffixes. (4.) Another pronominal 
peculiarity, arising from assimilation to the Hebrew, 
is occasionally found in the New Testament. In 
Hebrew there is only one relative pronoun, and this 
is. without any distinction as to number, gender, or 
case; on which account, to make the reference ex- 
plicit, it is necessary to add the suffixes of the per- 
sonal pronouns, or these pronouns themselves with a 
preposition. Hence such expressions as the follow- 
ing: "The land in which ye dwell upon it," "the 
place in which ye sojourn in it," and so on. As the 
Greek language possesses a declinable relative pro- 
noun, and adverbs derived from it, there was no need 
for this kind of awkward circumlocution. Yet the 
Evangelists were so accustomed to the Hebrew usage 
that they indulged in it occasionally, though not so 
frequently as the Septuagint. (5.) Again, the He- 
brew was as remarkable for the fewness, as the Greek 
for the multiplicity, of its forms to express time — the 
one having its simple past and future tenses, while 
the other had its present, imperfect, perfect, pluper- 
fect, its two aorists, first and second future, and 
paulo-post future. There can be no doubt that the 
New Testament writers were well acquainted with 
the principal tenses of the Grqek verb ; at the same 



THEIR AUTHENTICITY. 129 

time there are occasional anomalies, with a manifest 
preference for the simple past and future of the He- 
brew, and a tendency to use the future, as expressive 
of necessity and continued action (must and is wont) 
somewhat more frequently than is usual in ordinary 
Greek. 2. In the use of words and phrases which 
have their correspondence only in Hebrew, but are 
not found in profane Greek writers, whether of the 
earlier or of the later periods. We mention, first, 
such words as ##9a, (abba.) a/^v, (amen,) yeiwa^ (hell,) 
Jarav, (Satan,) etc. These are Oriental words in 
Greek letters, or with a Greek termination, and their 
meaning must be determined simply by a reference 
to their Oriental use. There are, again, words and 
phrases in themselves strictly Greek, but used in a 
sense different from what would naturally be put 
upon them by a simply Greek reader. For instance, 
the phrase -aaa cap^ (all flesh,) for "all men," is 
quite a Hebraism, for native Greek writers never 
used (TdpS in the sense of "men;" and such an ex- 
pression, if employed by them, would have meant 
not all mankind, but the whole flesh — of a man or 
an animal, as -it might happen. 

On the whole, we may say the Xew Testament 
Greek has about as many Hebraisms as a work writ- 
ten in English by a German in this country, who, 
though familiar with the English language, is not a 
thorough scholar, or a work translated from the Ger- 
man, and referring to modes of thought peculiar to 
German mind, will exhibit, more or less, the idiom of 
the German language. Thus, the Hebraisms we find 
in the Gospels show the Evangelists to have been 
Jews by birth, and men in humble stations, who 
were not ambitious of seeking an exemj)tion from the 



130 THE GOSPEL RECORDS: 

dialect they had once acquired, and we need not won- 
der to find the Hebraistic elements also in the writ- 
ings of so learned a man as Paul. Great as his eru- 
dition was, it was the erudition of a Jewish, not of a 
Grecian, school. His argumentations were those of 
a Jewish convert to Christianity, confuting his breth- 
ren on their own ground. How clearly can we rec- 
ognize in his writings the Saul of Tarsus, who was 
educated at the feet of Gamaliel ! There was, more- 
over, apart from the relation the New Testament 
writers bore to their country and nation, as Pair- 
bairn remarks, " a necessity for a certain departure 
from the pure, classical style, and calling in the aid 
of Jewish idioms and forms of speech, in order to 
exhibit in the most distinct and appropriate manner 
the peculiar truths of the Gospel. The native lan- 
guage of Greece, though in some respects the most 
perfect medium for the communication of thought 
which has ever been employed by the tongue of 
man, yet from being always conversant with worldly 
things, adapted to express every shade of thought 
and every variety of relationship within the human 
and earthly sphere — but still only these — it was not 
fully adequate to the requirements and purposes of 
Christian authorship. Por this higher end it needed 
to borrow something from the sanctuary of God, and 
to be, as it were, baptized in the modes of thought 
and utterance which were familiar to those who had 
enjoyed the training of the Spirit. Thus the writings 
of the Old Testament formed a necessary preparation 
for the language of the New, as did also the history 
and institutions of the one for the religious ideas of 
the other. Nor is it too much to say, that a Gos- 
pel in pure Greek, or even an apostolic epistle in 



THEIR AUTHENTICITY. 131 

pure Greek, is inconceivable. The canonical and the 
Hebrew are most intimately connected." Pairbairn 
adds to this : u It is perfectly consistent with all this, 
and no less true, that the writers of the New Testa- 
ment often show a correct acquaintance with the 
idioms of the Greek language. In many cases their 
language rises superior to the common dialect of the 
time, and approaches marvelously near to the preci- 
sion of Attic Greek, while in other passages it seems 
to sink below the average standard, and to present to 
us the peculiarities of the later Greek, distorted and 
exaggerated by Aramaic forms of expression. Where, 
however, in a merely-literary point of view, the Sacred 
Yolume may thus seem weakest, it is, considered from 
a higher point of view, incomparably strongest. It 
is this investiture of its doctrines with the peculiar 
richness and force of Hebraistic modes of expression, 
rather than with the diffluent garb of a corrupted 
and decayed Hellenism, that does truly reveal to us 
the overruling providence and manifold wisdom of 
God." 

It is also to be borne in mind, that, while all the 
writers of the New Testament partook, to some ex- 
tent, of the Hebraistic influence, some did so consid- 
erably more than others. The Hebraistic element 
differed even with the same writers in different parts 
of their writings, as in the Apocalypse of John, which 
is considerably more Hebraistic than either his Gos- 
pel or Epistles. The Gospel of Luke is decidedly less 
marked with Hebraisms than those of Matthew and 
Mark. While, therefore, there are peculiarities which 
distinguish the New Testament Greek, as a whole, 
from other Greek writings, there are also peculiari- 
ties distinguishing, the Greek of one writer from that 



132 THE GOSPEL KECORDS : 

of another, words and phrases used by one and not 
used by the others, or used in a manner peculiar to 
himself. Thus there is an individual, as well as a gen- 
eral, impress on the language of the New Testament 
writers — another mark of their authenticity. 

We have shown how fully the language of the Gos- 
pels accords with the personality and situation of 
those to whom they are ascribed. "We may go still 
further and assert, that they could not have been 
written by any person or persons who lived in an- 
other age than that of the apostles. The conjunction 
of such Latinisms as xevrupiwv, (centurion,) teyzwv, 
(legion,) TtpaiTwpwv, (prsetorium, judgment-hall.) zoua- 
rwdca, (watch,) zYjvaoq, (census, tribute,) zodpavrrfa 
(quadrans, farthing,) dr^dpwv, (denarius, penny,) a<r<jd- 
ptov, (assarius, farthing,) <7-ezouldzwp, (speculator, exe- 
cutioner,) (fpayelldxyaq, (having scourged, a participle 
formed from the Latin verb nagellare,) and many 
other terms, referring to the military force, revenue, 
and offices of the Eoman Government, with such 
Hebraisms as zopjilav, (Mark vii, 11,) pafiftouvi, (my 
Lord,) duo duo, (literally, two, two, Mark vi, 7,) Trpa- 
oiai 7zpa<nai, (literally, onion-beds, onion-beds, that is, 
in squares, like a garden-plot, Mark vi, 40, a Hebra- 
istic repetition, as in the previous instance,) to fidg- 
Xuytia rjjg £pr Jl ud)(7£w<;, (the abomination of desolation,) 
was natural only in Palestine during the period be- 
tween Herod the Great and the destruction of Jeru- 
salem, and marks the writers for Jews of that time 
and country. If we bear in mind that although the 
New Testament diction has much in common with 
the LXX and the Greek apocryphal literature of the 
Old Testament, yet it has also much that is peculiar 
to itself; that these conclusive peculiarities could pos- 



THEIR AUTHENTICITY. 133 

sibly arise only in the apostolic age, in such a state 
of the Jewish polity, as characterized the time be- 
tween the death of our Savior and the destruction of 
Jerusalem, and, finally, that the later Christian Greek 
literature necessarily presupposes the Xew Testament 
diction as its basis, we see at once how powerful a 
proof of the authenticity of our Gospels their pecul- 
iar idiom is. Apart from every other consideration, 
this circumstance alone exposes the absurdity of the 
theory which assigns the second century to the com- 
position of the Gospels or of any one of them. 

Before dismissing, however, the argument for the 
authenticity of the Gospel records drawn from the 
Xew Testament Greek, it is proper to notice an ob- 
jection. It has been asked : Was the current lan- 
guage of the common Jewish peo]:>le not the Aramaic 
dialect of the Hebrew language? Did our Savior 
and his apostles not usually speak in that language? 
How does it come, then, that the Evangelists, as well 
as the other writers of the New Testament, being 
Jews, should write in Greek? It is true that our 
Lord is represented on several occasions as speaking 
in Aramaic l as when he said to the daughter of the 
Jewish ruler, Jairus, '-Talitha cumi," and to the 
blind man, "Ephphatha,'' or when he referred to the 
terms currently employed among the people, such as 
raka, rabbi, corban ; when he applied to his disciples 
such epithets as Cephas, Barjona, Boanerges, or 
when, on the cross, he exclaimed, u Eli, Eli, lama 
sabachthani." There is, on the other hand, a very 
remarkable circumstance to which the Duke of Man- 
chester — in his Essay on the Harmonizing of the 
Gospels — has called attention. If we compare the 
Old Testament passages in the synoptical Gospels, 



134 THE GOSPEL RECORDS: 

we find that those of them which occur in the sermons 
or sayings of the Lord, are always from the LXX, 
while those of them which are quoted by the Evangel- 
ists themselves, deviate from the LXX in favor gen- 
erally of the Hebrew text. If Christ had generally 
spoken the Aramaic, it would be incomprehensible 
why the Evangelists should put quotations from the 
LXX only upon his lips, while they themselves, in their 
own quotations, do not restrict themselves to the 
LXX. The verbal harmony of the synoptical Evan- 
gelists is also best accounted for by the presumption 
that our Lord spoke usually in Greek with his dis- 
ciples, and this presumption is confirmed by the fact 
that at the raising of Jairus's daughter, where Jesus 
spoke Aramaic with the ruler of the synagogue, the 
verbal harmony of the Synoptist's report of his say- 
ing is defective ; so, also, in the history of his suffer- 
ings, the Old Testament is no longer quoted from the 
LXX, because at Jerusalem the Aramaic was spoken 
more generally than in Galilee. 

Though Dr. Fairbairn contends that the Aramaic, 
or later Syro-Chaldaic orni of the Hebrew, was the 
vernacular language of the Jewish people in the age 
of our Lord, and, consequently, the medium of inter- 
course on all ordinary occasions, he admits, "that 
from a long and varied concatenation of circum- 
stances, the Greek language must have been very 
commonly understood by the higher and more edu- 
cated classes throughout Syria. It was the policy 
both of Alexander and his successors, in that part of 
the world, to extend the language and culture as 
well as ascendency of Greece. With this view cities 
were planted at convenient distances, which might 
be considered Grecian rather than Asiatic in their 



THEIR AUTHENTICITY. 135 

population and manners. The Syriac kings, by whom 
the Macedonian line of rulers was continued, kept 
up Greek as the court language, and were, doubtless, 
followed by their official representatives and the in- 
fluential classes generally throughout the country. 
The army, too, though not entirely, nor perhaps 
even in the major part, yet certainly in very con- 
siderable proportions, was composed of persons of 
Grecian origin, who could not fail to make the Greek 
language in some sense familiar at the various mili- 
tary stations in the regions of Syria. Even after the 
Macedonian rule had terminated and all became sub- 
ject to the sway of the Eomans, it was still usually 
through the medium of the Greek tongue that official 
intercourse was maintained, and the decrees of gov- 
ernment were made known. It is in the very nature 
of things impossible that so many Hellenizing influ- 
ences should have continued in operation for two or 
three centuries without leading somewhat generally 
to a knowledge of Greek among the better classes in 
all parts of Syria. There were also circumstances 
more strictly peculiar to the Jewish people, which 
could not be without their effect in making them to 
some extent acquainted with the Greek language. 
Partly from special encouragements held out to them 
at the founding of Alexandria, a Grecian city, and 
partly, perhaps, from the mercantile spirit which be- 
gan to take possession of them from the time of the 
Babylonish exile, Alexandria became one of their 
great centers, where, as we are told by Philo, they 
formed about two-fifths of the entire population. 
They abounded also, as is clear from the Acts of the 
Apostles, in the Greek-speaking cities of Asia Minor, 
and in those of Greece itself. From whatever causes. 



136 THE GOSPEL RECORDS : 

a 

the dispersion seems, for some generations previous 
to the Christian era, to have taken very much a 
western, and especially a Grecian, direction ; in every 
place of importance inhabited by Greeks, members 
of the stock of Israel had their homes and synagogues. 
It is only, too, what might have been expected in 
the circumstances, that .the culture and enterprise, 
which distinguished the communities in those Grecian 
cities, would act with stimulating effect upon the 
Jewish mind, and bring its powers into more ener- 
getic play and freedom of action than was likely to 
be found among the Palestinian Jews, who were 
sealed up in their national bigotry and stagnant 
Pharisaism. Hence the only moral and religious 
productions which are known to have appeared 
among the Jews, between the closing of the Old 
Testament canon and the birth of Christ — those con- 
tained in the apocryphal writings — came chiefly, if 
not entirely, from the pen of the Hellenistic Jews, 
and exist only — most probably never did exist but — 
in the Greek language. Hence also the Greek trans- 
lation of the Old Testament, w T hich was completed 
several generations before the Christian era, and 
which, there is good reason to believe, was in extens- 
ive use, about that time, among the Jewish people. 
So that, looking to the numbers, the higher intelli- 
gence, and varied resources of the Hellenistic Jews, 
and taking into account their frequent personal visits 
to Palestine, at the ever-recurring festivals, we can 
not doubt that they materially contributed^ to a par- 
tial knowledge and use of the Greek tongue among 
their brethren in Palestine." 

There is scarcely left any doubt, but our Lord and 
his disciples spoke generally in Greek, and even if 



THEIR AUTHENTICITY. 137 

this should not have been the case, the fact that the 
books of the New Testament, and especially those 
which contain our Lord's personal discourses, should 
have been originally composed in the Greek instead 
of in the Aramaic language, is easily accounted for. 
"It was," says Dr. Fairbairn, "comparatively but a 
small portion of the people resident in Jerusalem 
and Judea who embraced the Christian faith ; and 
those who did, having, in the first instance, enjoyed 
many opportunities of becoming personally ac- 
quainted with the facts of Gospel history, and en- 
joying afterward the ministry of apostles and Evan- 
gelists, who were perfectly cognizant of the whole, 
were, in a manner, independent of any written rec- 
ords. Besides, the troubles which shortly after befell 
their native land, and which were distinctly foreseen 
by the founders of the Christian faith, destined, as 
they were, to scatter the power of the Jewish nation, 
and to render its land and people monuments of judg- 
ment, presented an anticipative reason against com- 
mitting the sacred and permanent records of the 
Christian faith to the Hebrew language. That lan- 
guage itself, already corrupted and broken, was 
presently to become to all but the merest fragment 
of the Jews themselves, antiquated and obsolete. The 
real centers of Christianity — the places where it took 
firmest root, and from which it sent forth its regen- 
erating power among the nations — from the time 
that authoritative records of its facts and expositions 
of its doctrines became necessary — were to be found 
in Greek-speaking communities — the communities 
scattered throughout the cities of Asia Minor, of 
Greece, at Eome, and the West — where also the first 

converts to the Christian faith consisted chiefly of 

12 



138 THE GOSPEL RECORDS : 

those whose native tongue was Greek. Whether, 
therefore, respect were had to the immediate wants 
of the first Christian communities, or to the quarters 
in w r hich the Gospel was to find its most active agents 
and representatives, and the direction which it was 
appointed to take in the world, the Greek was obvi- 
ously the language in which its original and author- 
itative documents behooved to be written. What- 
ever reasons there were for the adherents of Judaism 
getting the Scriptures of the Old Testament into 
Greek; whatever reasons, also, Josephus could have 
for translating into Greek his Jewish histories, and 
the authors of the apocryphal writings for adopting 
that language in preference to the Aramaic, the same 
reasons existed, and in far greater force, for the in- 
spired writings, which were to form, in earlier and 
later times, the fundamental records of the Christian 
faith, being composed in the Greek language, and in 
that language committed to the faithful keeping of 
the Church. Had they not been originally composed 
in Greek, the course of Providence would presently 
have required that they should be translated into 
Greek ; and considering how much depended on the 
correct knowledge of them, and how many sources 
we have for illustrating Greek, as compared with 
Aramaic productions, it was unspeakably better that, 
from the first, they should have ajDjDeared in a Greek 
form." 

\ 15. Some other Characteristics of the Style in which 
the Gospels are Written. 

1. The style of the Gospels, apart from the peculiar 
dialect of Greek in which they were written, is to- 
tally devoid of ornament; it presents no beautiful 



THEIR AUTHENTICITY. 139 

transitions from one subject to another; the ear is not 
charmed with the melody of harmonious periods ; 
the imagination is not fired with grand epithets. In 
short, we find in the Gospels the simplicity of writ- 
ers who were more intent upon things than upon 
words; we find men of plain education honestly 
relating what they knew, without attempting to 
adorn their narratives by any elegance of diction. 
And this is precisely the kind of writing which we 
should expect from the persons to whoni those books 
are ascribed. 

2. The Gospels are not proper histories; that is, 
they do not furnish a full and satisfactory account of 
the ministry of Jesus to one previously unacquainted 
with the essential facts concerning it. Either indi- 
vidually or collectively, they present only a brief 
narrative of some of the most striking events in our 
Lord's ministry, and these told by the writers, for 
the most part, nakedly and in a few words. No skill 
is shown bv any one of the Evangelists in connecting 
the different parts so as to form a continuous history. 
]S~o explanations are given, except a few, which are 
parenthetical and unimportant. With the exception 
of some passages in John's Gospel, there is no com- 
ment or intimation of surprise with regard to any 
thing told which discovers the writer's feelings or 
state of mind. This peculiarity of the Gospels fur- 
nishes another proof that they could not have been 
forged, no more than they could have been written 
by men whose imaginations had been strongly ex- 
cited by some extraordinary delusion. 

3. We discover in the Gospel narratives a striking 
consistency with that which the Evangelists do not 
atate expressly. This striking consistency has been 



140 THE GOSPEL RECORDS : 

presented by Mr. Norton in detail ; it is sufficient to 
quote from him the leading features: 

In the narratives of the Evangelists, the existence 
of many facts which are not expressly mentioned is 
implied. In order to understand fully what is told, 
and to perceive its bearing and application, we must 
take into view very much that is not told. There is 
to be found in almost every part of the Gospels a 
latent reference to some existing state of things 
which is not described. But when we attend to the 
character of those facts with which different portions 
of the narrative are thus connected, we find that they 
are all probable or certain ; that we have distinct evi- 
dence of them from other sources, or that they are 
such as must or might have existed. The inferences 
from these histories, though many and various, are 
all consistent with the histories themselves, and what- 
ever we can learn from other sources. In tracing out 
the necessary or probable bearing of those actions 
and discourses' which are recorded, or in assigning 
their probable occasions or consequences, we detect 
no inconsistency with the history itself, and find no 
contradiction of known facts; but, on the contrary, 
we are continually perceiving new marks of proba- 
bility and truth. This coincidence between what is 
told and what is implied does not appear here and 
there only, but discovers itself throughout the Gos- 
pels. But such a consistency of the narrative with 
itself can evidently not be the work of study or arti- 
fice. The Gospels are very inartificial compositions, 
and if the coincidences had been intended to give an 
air of probability to the narrative, the writer would 
have taken care that they should be noticed by the 
reader. The just and lively conception — which the 



THEIR AUTHENTICITY. 141 

writers of the Gospels evidently possessed of those 
numerous facts and circumstances that must or might 
have existed, if their history be true — admits of no 
other explanation, than that the narratives rest on 
the authority of those who were witnesses of what 
is related, and were themselves concerned in the 
transactions recorded. It follows, therefore, that 
these histories were committed to writing either by 
some of the immediate disciples of Christ, or by per- 
sons who derived, generally speaking, correct and 
particular information from such disciples. And if 
this conclusion is reached, there is no room left to 
doubt that they are the works of those particular in- 
dividuals to whom they have always been ascribed. 

We discover, therefore, in the characteristics of the 
Gospels which we have described, another mode in 
which it has pleased God to preserve to u.i in the 
very books themselves the evidence of their authen- 
ticity. Such is their incompleteness, that they are 
necessarily complicated with a great body of circum- 
stantial evidence of the most unsuspicious kind. 
Thus, what we might consider as their defects, when 
regarded merely as literary compositions, contribute 
greatly to enhance their value. 

§ 16. The Frequent Allusions of the Evangelists to the 
History of their Times. 

"Whoever," says Michaelis, " undertakes to forge a 
set of writings, and ascribe them to persons who 
lived in a former period, exposes himself to the ut- 
most danger of a discordancy with the history and 
manners of the age to which his accounts are re- 
ferred ; and this danger increases in proportion as 
they relate to points not mentioned in general history, 



142 THE GOSPEL RECORDS : 

but to such as belong only to a single city, sect, 
religion, or school. Of all books that ever were writ- 
ten, there is none, if the historical books of the New 
Testament are a forgery, so liable to detection ; the 
scene of action is not confined to a single country, 
but displayed in the greatest cities of the Roman Em- 
pire ; allusions are made to the various manners and 
principles of the Greeks, the Romans, and the Jews, 
which are carried so far with respect to this last na- 
tion, as to extend even to the trifles and follies of 
their schools. A Greek or Roman Christian, who 
lived in the second or third century, though ever so 
well versed in the writings of the ancients, would still 
have been wanting in Jewish literature ; and a Jew- 
ish convert in those ages, even the most learned 
rabbi, would have been equally deficient in the 
knowledge of Greece and Rome. If, then, the his- 
torical books of the New Testament thus exposed to 
detection — had it been an imposture — are found after 
the severest researches to harmonize with the history, 
the manners, and the opinions of the first century; 
and since the more minutely we inquire, the more 
perfect we find the coincidence, we must conclude 
that they were written in the age in which they 
profess to have been written." 

The numerous incidental allusions to the civil his- 
tory of the times, which the Gospels and the Acts 
furnish, and which are most strikingly verified by 
profane writers, have been most carefully collated by 
Mr. George Rawlinson in his " Historical Evidences 
of the Truth of the Scripture Records." He groups 
them under two heads, considering, first, all such as 
bear upon the general condition of the countries, 
which were the scene of the history, and^ secondly 



THEIR AUTHENTICITY. 143 

such as have reference to the civil rulers, who are 
represented as exercising authority in the countries 
at the time of the narrative, as follows : 

1. The political condition of Palestine at the time 
to which the ISTew Testament narrative properly be- 
longs, was one curiously complicated and anomalous; 
it underwent frequent changes, but retained through 
all of them certain peculiarities, which made the po- 
sition of the country unique among the dependencies 
of Borne. !Not having been conquered in the ordinary 
way, but having passed under the Roman dominion 
with the consent and by the assistance of a large 
party among the inhabitants, it was allowed to main- 
tain, for a while, a species of semi-independence, not 
unlike that of various native States in India, which 
are really British dependencies. A mixture, and to 
some extent an alternation, of Roman with native 
power resulted from this arrangement, and a conse- 
quent complication in the political status, which must 
have made it very difficult to be thoroughly under- 
stood by any one who was not a native and a cotem- 
jiorary. The chief representative of the Roman 
power in the East — the President of Syria, the local 
Governor, whether a Herod or a Roman procurator, 
and the high -priest, had each and all certain rights 
and a certain authority- in the country. A double 
system of taxation, a double administration of justice, 
and even in some degree a double military command, 
were the natural consequence, while Jewish and Ro- 
man customs, Jewish and Roman words, were simul- 
taneously in use, and a condition of things existed 
fall of harsh contrasts, strange mixtures, and abrupt 
transitions. Within the space of fifty }^ears Palestine 
was a single united kingdom under a native ruler, a 



144 THE GOSPEL RECORDS: 

set of principalities under native ethnarchs and te- 
trarchs, a country in part containing such principal- 
ities, in part reduced to the condition of a Roman- 
province, a kingdom reunited once more under 
a native sovereign, and a country reduced wholly 
under Rome, and governed by procurators dependent 
on the President of Syria, but still subject in certain 
respects to the Jewish monarch of a neighboring ter- 
ritory. These facts we know from Josephus, and 
other writers, who, though less accurate, on the 
whole confirm his statements; they render the civil 
history of Judea during this period one very difficult 
to master and remember ; the frequent changes, su- 
pervening upon the original complication, are a fer- 
tile source of confusion, and seem to have bewildered 
even the sagacious and painstaking Tacitus. The 
New Testament narrative, however, falls into no 
error in treating of the period ; it marks, incidentally 
and without effort or pretension, the various changes 
in the civil government — the sole kingdom of Herod 
the Great, (Matt, ii, 1 ; Luke i, 5 ;) the partition of 
his dominions among his sons, (Matt, ii, 22 ; xiv, 1 ; 
Luke iii, 1 ;) the reduction of Judea to the condition 
of a Roman province, while Galilee, Iturea, and 
Trachonitis continued under native princes, (Luke 
iii, 1 ;) the restoration of the old kingdom of Pales- 
tine, in the person of Agrippa the First, (Acts xii, 1, 
etc.,) and the final reduction of the whole under Ro- 
man rule, and reestablish ment of procurators, (Acts 
xxiii, 24; xxiv, 27, etc.,) as the civil heads, while a 
species of ecclesiastical superintendence was exercised 
by Agrippa the Second, (Acts xxv, 14, etc.) Again, 
the New Testament narrative exhibits in the most 
remarkable way the mixture in the government — the 



THEIR AUTHENTICITY. 145 

occasional power of the President of Syria, as shown 
in Cyrenius's "taxing," (Luke ii. 2; compare Acts 
v, 37 ;) the ordinary division of authority between 
the high-priest and the procurator. (Matt, xxvii, 1, 
2; Acts xxii. 30; xxiii, 1-10:) the existence of two 
separate taxations — the civil and the ecclesiastical — 
the ••census,'' (Matt, xvii, 17.) and the " didrachm," 
(Matt, xvii, 24;) of two tribunals. (John xviii, 28, 32, 
etc..) two modes of capital punishment, two military 
forces, (Matt, xvii, 64, 65.) two methods of marking- 
time. (Luke iii, 11:) at every turn it shows, even in 
such little matters as verbal expressions, the coex- 
istence of Jewish with Eoman ideas and practices in 
the country — a coexistence which } it must be remem- 
bered, came to an end within forty years of our Lord's 
crucifixion. The general tone and temper of the Jews 
at the time, their feelings toward the Romans, and 
toward their neighbors, their internal divisions and 
sects, their confident expectation of a deliverer, are 
represented by- Josephus, and other writers, in a 
manner which very strikingly accords with the ac- 
count incidentally given by the Evangelists. The 
extreme corruption and wickedness, not only of the 
mass of the people, but even of the rulers and chief 
men, is asserted by Josephus in the strongest terms ;* 
while, at the same time, he testifies to the existence 
among them of a species of zeal for religion, a read- 

* Joseph., De Bell. Jud... vii, S. g 1: "For that time was fruitful among the 

Jews in all sorts of wickedness, so that they left no evil deed undone ; nor was 
there any new form of wickedness which any one could invent if he wished to 
do so. Thus they were all corrupt hoth in their public and their private rela- 
tions ; and they vied with each other who should excel in impiety toward God 
and injustice to men. The more powerful oppressed the common people, and 
the common people eagerly sought to destroy the more powerful, for the former 
class were governed by the love of power, and the latter by the desire to seize 
and plunder the possessions of the wealthy." (Compare Ant. Jud., xx, 7, § 8; 
Bell. Jud., v, 13, g 6; and 10, g 5.) 

13 



146 THE GOSPEL RECORDS : 

iness to attend the feasts,* a regularity in the offer- 
ing of sacrifice,*)* an almost superstitious regard for 
the Temple, J and fanatic abhorrence of all who 
sought to change the customs which Moses had de- 
livered," (Acts vi, 14.) The conspiracy against Herod 
the Great, when ten men bound themselves by an 
oath to kill him, and, having armed themselves with 
short daggers, which they hid under their clothes, 
entered into the theater where they expected Herod 
to arrive, intending, if he came, to fall upon him 
and dispatch him with their weapons,§ breathes the 
identical spirit of that against Paul, which the 
promptness of the chief captain, Lysias, alone frus- 
trated, (Acts xxiii, 12-41.) "We find, from Josephus, 
that there was a warm controversy among the Jews 
themselves as to the lawfulness of "giving tribute to 
Csesar,"!! (Matt, xxii, 17;) that the Samaritans were 
hostile to such of the Galileans as had their " faces 



* Joseph.., Ant. Jud., xvii, 9, § 3; xx,4, § 3; Bell. Jud., ii, 19, § 1, etc. On one 
occasion it appears that more than two and a half millions of persons had come 
up to Jerusalem to worship. (Bell. Jud., vi, 9, § 3.) 

f Ant. Jud., xv, 7, § 8: "In Jerusalem there were two fortresses, one belonging 
to the city itself, and the other to the Temple. Whoever held these had the 
whole nation in their power ; for without the command of these, it was not pos- 
sible to offer the sacrifices ; and no Jew could endure the thought that these 
should fail to he offered ; they were even ready sooner to lay down their lives 
than omit the religious sacrifices which they were accustomed to offer to God. 

J Not only was Caligula's attempt to have his statue set up in the Temple re- 
sisted with determination, (Joseph., Ant. Jud., xviii, 8,) but when the younger 
Agrippa, by raising the hight of his house, obtained a view into the Temple 
courts, the greatest indignation was felt. The Jews immediately raised a wall 
to shut out his prospect, and when Festus commanded them to remove it, they 
positively refused, declaring that they would rather die than destroy any por- 
tion of the sacred fabric. (See Ant. Jud., xx, 8, § 11, and on the general subject 
compare Philo, De Legat. ad Caium. pp. 1022, 1023.) 

§ Ant. Jud., xv, 8, H 1-4. 

|| Josephus tells us that when Cyrenius came to take the census of men's prop- 
erties throughout Judea, a controversy arose among the Jews on the legality of 
submission to foreign taxation. Judas of Galilee (Acts v, 37) maintained that it 
was a surrender of the theocratic principle; while the bulk of the chief men, 
including some considerable number of the Pharisees, took the opposite view, 
and persuaded the people to submit themselves. (Ant. Jud., xviii, 1, § 1.) 



\ 



THEIR AUTHENTICITY. 147 

set to go to Jerusalem," (Luke ix, 51 ;) that on one 
occasion, at least, they fell upon those who were 
journeying through their land to attend a feast, and 
murdered a large number,* that the Pharisees and 
Sadducees were noted sects, distinguished by the 
tenets which in Scripture are assigned to them;f 
that the Pharisees were the more popular, and per- 
suaded the common people as they pleased, while the 
Sadducees were important chiefly as men of high 
rank and station ;J and that a general expectation, 
founded upon the prophecies of the Old Testament, 
existed among the Jews during the Eoman war, that 
a great king was about to rise up, in the East, of 
their own race and country. § This last fact is con- 
firmed by both Suetonius 1 1 and Tacitus, ^[ and is one 

*Ant. Jud., xx, 6, § 1 : "Now, there arose an enmity between the Samaritans 
and the Jews, from the following cause: The Galileans were accustomed, in 
going up to the feasts that were held iD Jerusalem, to pass through the country 
of the Samaritans. At this time there was, on the road which they took, a vil- 
lage called Ginea, situated on the boundary between Samaria and the great 
plain. When the Galileans came to this place they were attacked, and many of 
them killed. 

f Ant. Jud., xviii, 1, §§ 3, 4. Note especially the following : Of the Pharisees — 
" They believe that souls have immortal vigor, and that beyond the grave there 
are rewards and punishments, according as they follow a virtuous or a vicious 
course of life in this world." Of the Sadducees — "But the doctrine of the Sad- 
ducees is, that the soul is annihilated together with the body." (Compare Acts 
xxiii, 8.) 

JAnt. Jud., I, s. c. [The Pharisees] "are very influential with the people; 
and whatever prayers to God or sacrifices are performed, are performed at their 
dictation. The doctrine (of the Sadducees) is received by but few : but these are 
the men who are in the highest authority." 

§ Bell. Jud., vi, 5, § 4. " But that which most of all roused them to undertake 
this war, was an ambiguous article, . . . found in their sacred books, that, 
at that time, a man of their country should rule over the whole earth." 

I Sueton., Vit. Vespasian, § 4: "An ancient and settled opinion had prevailed 
throughout the whole East, that fate had decreed that at that time persons pro- 
ceeding from Judea should become masters of the world. This was foretold, as 
the event afterward proved, of the Eoman emperor ; but the Jews applied it to 
themselves, and this was the cause of their rebellion." (Compare Vit. Octav., 
§ 94, and Virg. Eclog., iv.) 

fl Tacit. Histor., v, 13 : " These things [the prodigies that occurred just before 
the capture of Jerusalem by the Eomans] were regarded by a few as alarming 
omens ; but the greater number believed that it was written in the ancient booka 



148 THE GOSPEL records: 

which even Strauss does not venture to dispute. It 
would be easy to point out a further agreement be- 
tween the Evangelical historians and profane writers 
with respect to the manners and customs of the Jews 
at this period. There is scarcely a matter of this 
kind noted in the ]STew Testament, which may not 
be confirmed from Jewish sources, such as Josephus, 
Philo, and the Mishna. The points of agreement 
hitherto adduced have had reference to the Holy 
Land and its inhabitants. It is not, however, in 
this connection only that the accuracy of the Evan- 
gelical writers in their accounts of the general con- 
dition of those countries which are the scene of their 
history is observable. Their descriptions of the Greek 
and Eoman world, so far as it comes under their 
cognizance, are most accurate. Iso where have the 
character of the Athenians and the general appear- 
ance of Athens been more truthfully and skillfully 
portrayed than in the few verses of the Acts which 
contain the account of Paul's visit. The people — 
" Athenians and strangers spending their time in 
nothing but hearing or telling of some new thing," 
(Acts xvii, 21 ;) philosophizing and disputing on 
Mars' Hill and in the market-place, (ibid., verse 17,) 
glad to discuss, though disinclined to believe, (Acts 
xvii, 32, 33.) and yet religious withal, standing in 
honorable contrast with the other Greeks in respect 
of their reverence for things divine, (ibid., verse 
22,) — are put before us with all the vividness of life, 
just as they present themselves to our view in the 
pages of their own historians and orators* Again, 

of the priests, that at that very time the East should become very powerful, and 
that persons proceeding from Judea should become masters of the world." 

•• : How attractive to strangers Athens was, even in her decline, may be seen from 
the examples of Cicero, Germanicus, Pausanias, and others. (See Conybeare and 



THEIR AUTHENTICITY. 149 

how striking, and how thoroughly classical is the 
account of the tumult at Ephesus, (Acts xix, 23,) 
where almost every word receives illustration from 
ancient coins and inscriptions, as has been excellently 
shown in a recent work of great merit on the life of 
Paid.* Or, if we turn to Borne and the Eoman sys- 
tem, how truly do we find depicted the great and 
terrible emperor, whom all feared to provoke — the 
provincial administration by proconsuls and others 
chiefly anxious that tumults should be prevented — ■ 
the contemptuous religious tolerance — the noble prin- 
ciple of Eoman law, professed, if not always acted 
on, whereby accusers and accused were brought "face 
to face," and the latter had free "license to answer 
for themselves concerning; the crimes laid against 
them, (Acts xxv, 16) — the privileges of Eoman citi- 
zenship, sometimes acquired by birth, sometimes by 
purchase — the right of appeal possessed and exercised 

Howson's Life of St. Paul, vol. i, pp. 398, 399.) On the greediness of the Athe- 
nians after novelty see Demost. Philipp., i, p. 43, (" Or tell me, do you wish to go 
about asking each other in the market-place, What is the news ? And can there 
be any thing newer than that the man of Macedon," etc.;) Philipp. Epist., pp. 
156, 157; JElian., Var. Hist., v, 13; Schol. ad Thucyd., iii, 38, etc. On their 
religiousness, compare Pausan., i, 21, § 3, (the Athenians are more zealous than 
others in the worship of gods;) Xen., Rep. Atheniens., iii, §§ 1, S ; Joseph., 
Contra Apion., ii, 11, ("All say that the Athenians are the most religious of the 
Greeks;") Strab., v, 3, § 18; JElian., Var. Hist., v, 17; Philostrat., Vit. Appol- 
lon., vi, 3 ; Dionys. Hal. De Jud. Thucyd., § 10 ; and among later authors, see itr. 
Grote's History of Greece, vol. iii, pp. 229-232. 

* See the Life and Epistles of St. Paul by Messrs. Conybeare and Howson, vol. 
ii, pp. 66, etc. (1.) The " Great Goddess Diana " is found to have borne that title 
as her usual title, both from an inscription, (Bceckh, Corpus Inscript., 2,963,) and 
from Xenophon, (Ephes., i, p. 15,) "I invoke our ancestral God, the Great Diana 
of the Ephesians." (2.) The Asiarchs are mentioned on various coins and 
inscriptions. (3.) The town-clerk (ypafXjAaTevs) of Ephesus is likewise mentioned 
in inscriptions. (Bceckh, No. 2,963 C, Xo. 2,966, and Xo. 2,990.) (1.) The curi- 
ous word vecoKopo?, (Acts xix, 35.) literally "sweeper" of the temple, is also 
found in inscriptions and on coins, as an epithet of the Ephesian people. 
(Bceckh, Xo. 2,966.) The " silver shrines of Diana," the " court-days," the " dep- 
uties" or "proconsuls," {avOvnaToi,) might receive abundant classical illustra- 
tion. The temple was the glory of the ancient world ; enough still remains of 
the "theater" to give evidence of its former greatness. 



150 THE GOSPEL RECORDS ': 

by the provincials — the treatment of prisoners — the 
peculiar manner of chaining them — the employment 
of soldiers as their guards — the examination by tor- 
ture — the punishment of condemned persons not be- 
ing Eoman citizens by scourging and crucifixion — 
the manner of this punishment — the practice of 
bearing the cross, of affixing a title or superscription, 
of placing soldiers under a centurion to watch the 
carrying into effect of this sentence, of giving the 
garments of the sufferer to these persons, of allowing 
the bodies after death to be buried by the friends — 
and the like ! The sacred historians are as familiar not 
only with the general character, but even with some 
of the obscurer customs of Greece and Borne, as with 
those of their own country. Fairly observant and 
always faithful in their accounts, they continually 
bring before us little points which accord minutely 
with notices in profane writers nearly cotemporary 
with them, while occasionally they increase our 
knowledge of classic antiquity by touches harmoni- 
ous with its spirit, but additional to the information 
which we derive from the native authorities.* Again, 

* Among minute points of accordance may be especially noticed the following: 
1. The geographical accuracy. (1.) Compare the divisions of Asia Minor men- 
tioned in the Acts with those in Pliny. Phrygia, Galatia, Lycaonia, Cilicia, 
Pamphylia, Pisidia, Asia, Mysia, Bithynia, are all recognized as existing prov- 
inces by the Eoman geographer writing probably within a few years of Luke. 
(Plin., H. N., v, 27, etc.) (2.) The division of European Greece into the two 
provinces of Macedonia and Achaia, (Acts xix, 24, etc.,) accords exactly with 
the arrangement of Augustus noticed in Strabo, (xvii, ad fin.) (3.) The various 
tracts in or about Palestine belong exactly to the geography of the time, and of 
no other. Judea, Samaria, Galilee, Trachelitis, Iturea, Abilene, Decapolis, are 
recognized as geographically distinct at this period by the Jewish and classical 
writers. (See Plin., H. N., v, 14, 18, 23; Strab., xvi, §§ 10, 34; Joseph., Ant. 
Jud., xix, 5, I 1, etc.) (4.) The routes mentioned are such as were in use at the 
time. The " ship of Alexandria," which, conveying Paul to Rome, lands him at 
Puteoli, follows the ordinary course of the Alexandrian corn-ships, as mentioned 
by Strabo, (xvii, 1, I 7,) Philo, (in Flacc, pp. 968-9,) and Seneca, (Epist. 77,) and 
touches at customary harbors. (See Sueton., Vit. Tit., g 25.) Paul's journey 
from Troas by Neapolis to Philippi presents an exact parallel to that of Igna* 



THEIR AUTHENTICITY. 151 

it has been well remarked that the condition of the 
Jews beyond the limits of Palestine is represented 
by the Evangelical writers very agreeably to what 
may be gathered of it from Jewish and heathen 
sources. The wide dispersion of the chosen race is 
one of the facts most evident upon the surface of the 
Kew Testament history. "Parthians, and Jledes, and 
Elamites, and dwellers in Mesopotamia, and Judea, 
and Cappadocia, Pontus, and Asia, Phrygia, and 
Pamphylia, in Egypt, and in the parts of Lybia 
about Cyrene, strangers of Borne, Cretes, and Ara- 
bians," (Acts ii, 9-11,) are said to have been wit- 
nesses, at Jerusalem, of the first outpourings of the 
Holy Ghost. In the travels of Paul through Asia 



tius, sixty years later, (Martyr. Ignat., c. 5.) His passage through Amphipolis 
and Appollonia, on his road from Philippi to Thessalonica, is in accordance with 
the Itinerary of Antoine, which places those towns on the route between the two 
cities. (5.) The mention of Philippi as the first city of Macedonia to one ap- 
proaching from the East, ("the chief city of that part of Macedonia," Acts xvi, 
12,) is correct, since there was no other between it and Xeapolis. The statement 
that it was a "colony " is also true, (Dio. Cass., Ii, 4, p. 445, D. ; Plin., H. X.,iv, 
11 ; Strab., vii, Fr., 41.) 2. The minute political knowledge. (1.) We have 
already seen the intimate knowledge exhibited of the state of Ephesus, with its 
proconsul, town-clerks, Asiarchs, etc. A similar exactitude appears in the des- 
ignation of the chief magistrates of Thessalonica as "the rulers of the city," 
(Acts xvii, 6,) their proper and peculiar appellation. (Boeckh, Corp. Inscr., Xo. 
1,967.) (2.) So, too. the Koman Governors of Corinth and Cyprus are given their 
correct titles. (3.) Publius, the Roman Governor of Malta, has again his proper 
technical designation, ("the chief man of the island," Acts xxviii, 7,) as appears 
from inscriptions commemorating the chief of the Melitans, or " Melitensiuui 
primus." (See Alford ii, p. 282.) (4.) The delivery of the prisoners to the "cap- 
tain of the [Praetorian] guard" at Rome is in strict accordance with the practice 
of the time. (Trajan, ap. Plin., Ep. x, 65: "He ought to be sent bound to the 
Prefects of my Praetorian guard." Compare Philostrat., Vit. Sophist., ii, 32.) 
Among additions to our classical knowledge for which we are indebted to 
Scripture it may suffice to mention, 1. The existence of an Italian cohort, (the 
Italian band.) as early as the reign of Tiberius, (Acts x, 1.) 2. The application 
of the term 2e/3ao-T7], (Augustan,) to another cohort, a little later, (Acts xxviii, 
1.) 3. The existence of an altar at Athens with the inscription. "To the un- 
known God," (Acts xvii, 23.) which is not to be confounded with the well-known 
inscriptions to unknown gods. 4. The use of the title oTpa-nryol (Praetors) by the 
Duumviri or chief magistrates of Philippi, (Acts xvi, 20.) We know from Cicero, 
(De Leg. Agrar., 34,) that the title was sometimes assumed in such cases, but w r e 
have no other proof that it was in use at Philippi. 



152 THE GOSPEL RECORDS: 

.Minor and Greece, there is scarcely a city to which 
he comes but has a large body of Jewish residents. 
Compare with these representations the statements 
of Agrippa the First, in his letter to Caligula, as re- 
ported by the Jewish writer, Philo. " The Holy 
City, the place of my nativity," he says, " is the 
metropolis, not of Judea only, but of most other 
countries, by means of the colonies which have been 
sent out of it from time to time; some to the neigh- 
boring countries of Egypt, Phoenicia, Syria, Ccelo- 
Syria — some to more distant regions, as Pamphylia, 
Cilicia, Asia as far as Bythnia, and the recesses of 
Pontus — and in Europe, Thessaly, Boeotia, Macedonia, 
iEtolia, Attica, Argos, Corinth, together with the 
most famous of the islands, Euboea, Cyprus, and 
Crete, to say nothing of those who dwell beyond the 
Euphrates. Eor, excepting a small part of the Bab- 
ylonian, and other satrapies, all the countries which 
have a fertile territory possess Jewish inhabitants ; 
so that, if thou shalt show this kindness to my na- 
tive place, thou wilt benefit not one city only, but 
thousands in every region of the world, in Europe, 
in Asia, in Africa — on the continents, and in the 
islands — on the shores of the sea, and in the interior." 
In a similar strain, Philo himself boasts, that "one 
region does not contain the Jewish people, since it is 
exceedingly numerous ; but there are many of them 
in almost all the flourishing countries of Europe and 
Asia, both continental and insular." And the cus- 
toms of these dispersed Jews are accurately repre- 
sented in the I\ T ew Testament. That they consisted 
in part of native Jews, in part of converts or prose- 
lytes, is evident from Josephus;* that they had 

* Joseph., Ant. Jud., xx, 2; De Bell. Jud., vii, 3, g 3 ; Contr. Apion., ii, 36, etc. 



THEIR AUTHENTICITY. 153 

places of worship, called Synagogues or oratories, in 
the towns where they lived, appears from Philo ; that 
these were commonly by the seaside, as represented 
in the Acts, (Acts xvi, 13,) is plain from many 
authors j* that they had also — at least sometimes — 
a synagogue belonging to them at Jerusalem, whither 
they resorted at the time of the feasts, is certain 
from the Talmudical writers ; that at Borne they con- 
sisted in great part of freed men, or " Libertines," 
whence the synagogue of the Libertines, (Acts vi, 9,) 
may be gathered from Philo and Tacitus. Their 
bearing toward the apostolic preachers is such as we 
should expect from persons whose close contact with 
those of a different religion made them all the more 
zealous for their own ; and their tumultuous proceed- 
ings are in accordance with all that we learn from 
profane authors of the tone and temper of the Jews 
generally at this period.f 

II. The civil governors and administrators dis- 
tinctly mentioned by the ~New Testament historians 
are the following: the Eoman Emperors Augustus, 
Tiberius, and Claudius ; the Jewish Kings and 
Princes, Herod the Great, Archelaus, Herod the Te- 
trarch, (or as he is commonly called, Herod Antipas,) 
Philip the Tetrarch, Herod Agrippa the First, and 
Herod Agrippa the Second; the Eoman Governors, 
Cyrenius, (or Quirinius,) Pontius Pilate, Sergius 
Paulus, Gallio, Festus, and Felix, and the Greek 

-Philo frequently mentions the synagogue under the name of "places of 
prayer." (In Flacc, p. 972, A., B., E. ; Legat. in Caium, p. 1,014, etc.) Their 
position by the seaside or by a riverside is indicated, among other places, in the 
Decree of the Halicarnassians reported by Josephus, (Ant. Jud., xiv, 10, § 23,) 
-where the Jews are allowed to offer prayers by the seaside according to their 
national custom. See also Philo, Legat. in Caium, p. 982, D.; Tertull. ad Nat. 
i, 13 ; and Juv. Sat., iii, 13. 

f For the tumultuous spirit of the foreign Jews, see Sueton., Vit. Claud., p. 25j 
Dio Cassius, lx, 6 ; Joseph., Ant. Jud., xviii, 8, § 1 ; 9, § 9 ; xx, "", g 1, etc. 



154 THE GOSPEL RECORDS : 

Tetrarch, Lysanias. It may be shown from profane 
sources, in almost every case, that these persons ex- 
isted ; that they lived at the time, and bore the 
offices assigned to them ; that they were related to 
each other, when any relationship is stated, as Scrip- 
ture declares; and that the actions ascribed to them 
are either actually such as they performed, or at least 
in perfect harmony with what profane history tells 
us of their characters. 

The Jewish kings and princes, whose names occur 
in the New Testament narrative, occupy a far more 
prominent place in it than the Roman emperors. 
The Gospel narrative opens, "In the days of Herod 
the King," (Matt, ii, 1; Luke i, 5;) who, as the father 
of Archelaus, (Matt, ii, 22,) maybe identified with the 
first monarch of the name, the son of Antipater the 
Idumean. This monarch is known to have reigned 
in Palestine cotemporaneously with Augustus, who 
confirmed him in his kingdom, and of whom he held 
the sovereignty till his decease. Cunning, suspicion, 
and cruelty are the chief traits of his character, as 
depicted in Scripture, and these are among his most 
marked characteristics in Josephus.* The consist- 
ency of the massacre at Bethlehem with his temper 
and disposition is now acknowledged ;f skej)ticism 

* The cruelties, deceptions, and suspicions of Herod the Great fill many 
chapters in Josephus. (Ant. Jud., xv, 1, 3, 6, 7, etc.; xvi, 4, 8, 10; xvii, 3, 6, 
7, etc.) His character is thus summed up hy that writer: "He was a man 
cruel to all alike, yielding to the impulse of passion, but regardless of the 
claims of justice ; and yet no one was ever favored with a more propitious for- 
tune." (Ant. Jud., xvii, 8, § 1. His arrest of the chief men throughout his 
dominion, and design that on his own demise they should all be executed, 
(Ibid., 6, § 5; Bell. Jud., i, 33, § 6,) shows a bloodier temper than even the mas- 
sacre of the Innocents. 

•j- Strauss grants the massacre to be "not inconsistent with the disposition 
of the aged tyrant to the extent that Schleiermacher supposed," but objects 
that " neither Josephus, who is very minute in his account of Herod, nor tho 
rabbins, who were assiduous in blackening his memory, give the slightest hint 



THEIR AUTHENTICITY. 155 

has nothing to urge against it, except the silence of 
the Jewish writers, which is a weak argument, if it 
is not outweighed by the testimony, albeit somewhat 
late and perhaps inaccurate, of ilaerobius.* 

At the death of Herod the Great his kingdom — 
according to Josephus — was divided, with the consent 
of Augustus, among three of his sons. Archelaus 
received Judea, Samaria, and Idumea, with the title 
of ethnarch ; Philip and Antij^as were made tetrarchs, 
and received, the latter Galilee and Perea, the former 
Trachonitis and the adjoining regions. f The notices 
of the Evangelists are confessedly in conrplete ac- 
cordance with these statements. Matthew mentions 
the succession of Archelaus in Judea, and implies 
that he did not reign in Galilee, (Matt, ii, 22.) Luke 
records Philip's tetrarchy, (Luke iii, 1;) while the 
tetrarchy of Antipas, who is designated by his family 

of this decree." He omits to observe, that they could scarcely narrate the 
circumstance 'without some mention of its reason — the birth of the supposed 
Messiah — a subject on which their prejudices necessarily kept them silent. 

■■'■ Macrob. Saturnal., ii, 4 : " When Augustus had heard that among the children 
under two years of age ichom Herod, the ling of the Jens, had commanded to be slain 
in Syria, there was also one of the king's own sons, he said it was better to be 
the sow than the son of Herod;" Strauss contends that "the passage loses all 
credit by confounding the execution of Antipater, who had gray hairs, with the 
murder of the infants renowned among the Christians ;" but Macrobius says 
nothing of Antipater, and evidently does not refer to any of the known sons 
of Herod. He believes that among the children massacred was an infant son of 
the Jewish king. It is impossible to say whether he was right or wrong in 
this belief. It may have simply originated in the fact that a jealousy of a 
royal infant was known to have been the motive for the massacre. (See 01- 
shausen, Biblic. Comment., vol. i, p. 72, note, p. 67, E. T.) 

-j- Josephus says, "When Caesar had heard these things he dissolved the as- 
sembly, and a few days after he appointed Archelaus, not indeed king, but 
ethnarch of half the country which had been subject to Herod, . . . and 
the other half he divided, and gave it to two other sons of Herod, Philip and 
Antipas, ... to the latter of whom he made Perea and Galilee subject, 

. . . while Batanea with Trachonitis and Auranitis, with a certain part 
or what is called the House of Zenadorus, were subjected to Philip ; but the 
parts subject to Archelaus were Idumea, and Judea, and Samaria." (Antiq. 
Jud., xvii, 11, § 4.) Compare the brief notice of Tacitus : " The country which 
had been subdued was governed, in three divisions, by the sons of Herod." 
(Hist., v, 9.) 



156 THE GOSPEL RECORDS : 

name of Herod, is distinctly asserted by both Evan 
gelists, (Matt, xiv, 1.) Moreover, Matthew implies 
that Archelaus bore a bad character at the time of 
his accession, or soon afterward, which is consistent 
with the account of Josephus, who tells us that he 
was hated by the other members of his own family; 
and that shortly after his father's death he^lew three 
thousand Jews, on account of a tumult at Jerusalem. 
The first three Evangelists agree as to the character 
of Herod Antipas, which is weak, rather than cruel 
or bloodthirsty; and their portraiture is granted to 
be "not inconsistent with his character, as gathered 
from other sources." The facts of his adultery with 
Herodias, the wife of one of his brothers,* and of 
his execution of John the Baptist for no crime that 
could be alleged against him, are recorded by Jo- 
sephus ;f and though in the latter case there is some 
apparent diversity in the details, yet it is plain that 

* Josephus says, "Herod the tetrarch had married the daughter of Aretas, 
and had now lived with her a long time. But having made a journey to Rome, 
he lodged in the house of Herod, his brother, but not by the same mother. 
For this Herod was the son of the daughter of Simon, the high-priest. Now, 
he fell in love with Herodias, this man's wife, who was the daughter of 
Aristobulus, their brother, and the sister of Agrippa the Great ; and he had 
the boldness to propose marriage. She accepted the proposal, and it was 
agreed that she should go to live with him whenever he should return from 
Rome." (Ant. Jud., xviii, 5, \ 1.) And again: "Herodias, their sister, was 
married to Herod, the son of Herod the Great, who was born of Mariamne, the 
daughter of Simon the high-priest, who had also a daughter Salome ; after tho 
birth of whom Herodias, in shameful violations of the customs of our nation, 
allowed herself to marry Herod, the brother of her former husband by the 
same father, separating from him while he was living. Now this man [whom 
she married] held the office of tetrarch of Galilee." (Ibid., § 4.) 

f Ant. Jud., xviii, 5, § 2 : "Now some of the Jews thought that the army of 
Herod had been destroyed by God, in most righteous vengeance for the punish- 
ment inflicted upon John, mrnamed the Baptist. For he taught the Jews to culti- 
vate virtue, and to practice righteousness toward each other and piety toward 
God, and so to come to baptism. For he declared that this dipping would be 
acceptable to Him, if they used it not with reference to the renunciation of certain 
sins, but to the purification of the body, the soul having been purified by right- 
eousness. And when others thronged to him — for they were profoundly moved 
at the hearing of his words — Herod feared that his great influence over the 



THEIR AUTHENTICITY. 157 

the different accounts may be reconciled.* The con- 
tinuance of the tetrarchy of Philip beyond the fif- 
teenth, and that of Antipas beyond the eighteenth of 
Tiberius, is confirmed by Josephus, f who also shows 
that the ethnarehy of Archelaus came speedily to an 
end, and that Judea was then reduced to the condi- 
tion of a Eoman province, and governed for a con- 
siderable space by procurators. However, after a 
while, the various dominions of Herod the Great 
were reunited in the person of his grandson, Agrippa, 
the son of Aristobulus and brother of Herodias, who 
was allowed the title of king, and was in favor with 
both Caligula and Claudius. It can not be doubted 
that this person is the "Herod the King" of the 

men would lead them to some revolt, for they seemed ready to do any thing by 
his advice ; he, therefore, thought it much better to anticipate the evil, by put- 
ting him to death, before he had attempted to make any innovation, than to 
allow himself to be brought into trouble and then repent after some revolution- 
ary movement had commenced. And so John, in consequence of the suspicion 
of Herod, was sent as a prisoner to the aforementioned castle of Machaerus, and 
was there put to death." The genuineness of this passage is admitted even by 
Strauss. (Leben Jesu, § IS ; vol. 1, pp. 344-47, E. T.) 

* This even Strauss admits. The chief points of apparent difference are the 
motive of the imprisonment and the scene of the execution. Josephus makes 
fear of a popular insurrection, the Evangelist's offense at a personal rebuke, 
the motive. But here, as Strauss observes, there is no contradiction, for Anti- 
pas might well fear that John, by his strong censure of the marriage and the 
whole course of the tetrarch's life, might stir up the people into rebellion 
against him. Again, from the Gospels we naturally imagine the prison to be 
near Tiberias, where Herod Antipas ordinarily resided ; but Josephus says that 
prison was at Machaerus in Perea, a day's journey from Tiberias. Here, how- 
ever, an examination of the Gospels shows, that the place where Antipas made 
his feast and gave his promise is not mentioned. It only appears that it was 
near the prison. Now, as Herod was at this time engaged in a war with 
Aretas, the Arabian prince, between whose kingdom and his own lay the 
fortress of Machaerus, it is a probable solution of the difficulty that he was re- 
Biding with his court at Machaarus at this period. (Strauss, g 48, ad fin.) 
This supposition is confirmed by the fact that Josephus connects the imprison- 
ment and death of the Baptist with the defeat of Herod in battle by his father- 
in-law, Aretas — this defeat being regarded by many of the Jews as a just pun- 
ishment sent by God upon Herod for this act of injustice £.nd cruelty. 

f Philip is said to have retained his tetrarchy till the twentieth year of Ti- 
berius. (Ant. Jud., xviii, 5, § 6.) Herod Antipas- lost his government in the 
first of Caligula. (Ibid., ch. 7.) 



158 THE GOSPEL RECORDS: 

Acts, (Acts xii, 1,) whose persecution of the Church, 
whose impious pride, and whose miserable death, are 
related at length by the sacred historian. Josephus 
records, with less accuracy of detail than Luke, the 
striking circumstances of this monarch's decease — 
the "set day," the public assemblage, the "royal 
dress," the impious flattery, its complacent reception, 
the sudden judgment, the excruciating disease, the 
speedy death.* No where does profane history fur- 
nish a more striking testimony to the substantial 
truth of the sacred narrative, no where is the su- 
perior exactness of the latter over the former more 
conspicuous. 

On the death of Herod Agrippa, Judea — as Jose- 
phus informs us — became once more a Eoman prov- 

* Josephus, Ant. Jud., xix, 8, g 2: "Now after he had reigned three full 
years over the whole of Judea, he was at the city of Ccesarea, which was for- 
merly called Strato's Tower. And there he held public shows in honor of 
Caesar, having learned that a certain festival was celebrated at that time to 
make vows for his safety. Now, at that festival, there were assembled a mul- 
titude of those who were first in office and authority in the province. On the 
second day of the shows, putting on a robe made entirely of silver, the texture 
of which was truly wonderful, he came into the theater early in the morning. 
When the first beams of the sun shone upon the silver, it glittered in a won- 
derful manner, flashing forth a brilliancy which amazed and awed those who 
gazed upon him. Whereupon his flatterers immediately cried out — though 
not for his good — one from one place, and one from another — addressing him 
as a god — 'Be propitious unto us,' and adding, ' Although we have heretofr*t7 
feared thee as a man, yet henceforth we acknowledge thee to be of more than 
mortal nature.' The king did not rebuke them, nor reject their impious flat- 
tery. A little after, therefore, looking up, he saw an owl sitting on a certain 
rope over his head ; and he immediately understood that it was a messenger 
of evil, as it had formerly been of good ; whereupon he was overcome with a 
profound sadness. There was also a severe pain in his bowels, which began 
with a sudden violence. Turning, therefore, to his friends he said : ' I, your 
god, am now commanded to end my life ; and fate immediately reproves the 
false shouts that were just now addressed to me ; and so I, whom you call im 
mortal, am now snatched away by death. But w r e must accept the fate which 
God ordains ! And, indeed, we have not lived ill, but in the most brilliant 
good fortune.' When he had said this he was overcome by the intensity of the 
pain. He was, therefore, quickly carried to the palace, and the report went 
abroad to all that he must inevitably soon die. . . Being consumed thus, 
for five days in succession, with the pain in his belly, he departed this life." 



THEIR AUTHENTICITY. 159 

ince under procurators * but the small kingdom of 
Cbalcis was, a few years later, conferred by Claudius 
on this Herod's son, Agrippa the Second, who, after- 
ward, received other territories.*)" This prince is 
evidently the "King Agrippa" before whom Paul 
pleaded his cause. (Acts xxv, 13, etc.) The Bernice, 
who is mentioned as accompanying him on his visit 
to Pestus, was his sister, who lived with him, and 
commonly accompanied him upon his journeys. J 
Besides his separate sovereignty he had received 
from the emperor a species of ecclesiastical suprem- 
acy in Judea, where he had the superintendence of 
the Temple, the direction of the sacred treasury, and 
the right of nominating the high-priests. § These 
circumstances account sufficiently for his visit to 
Judea, and explain the anxiety of Festus that he 
should hear Paul, and Paul's willingness to plead 
before him. 

The Eoman procurators, Pontius Pilate, Pelix, and 
Pestus, are prominent personages in the history of 
Josephus, where they occur in the proper chronolog- 



* Ant. Jud., xix, 9, § 2: " [Claudius] therefore sent Caspius Fadus as a procu- 
rator over Judea and all the kingdom." 

f Ant. Jud., xx, 5, \ 2 ; vii, 1 ; and 8, § 4. Agrippa II bore the title of kiug, 
(De Bell. Jud., ii, 12, § 8.) 

X Ant. Jud., xix, 9, § 1 ; xx, 7, § 3. The evil reports which arose from this 
constant companionship are noticed by Josephus in the latter of these passages. 
They are glanced at in the well-known passage of Juvenal, (Sat. vi, 155-169 ;) 
"That well-known diamond made even more precious by being worn on the 
finger of Bernice. This jewel the barbarian formerly gave to that unchaste 
woman, and Agrippa gave it to his sister, in that country where kings keep the 
Sabbath festival with naked feet, and an ancient indulgence allows the old men 
to eat pork." (Compare Tacit., Hist., ii, 2, 81.) 

I Joseph., Ant. Jud., xx, 8, § 8 ; 9, § 7: "The king had been intrusted by 
Claudius Caesar with the care of the Temple." In one passage, (Ant. Jud., xx, 
1, § 3,) Josephus says that these privileges continued to be exercised by the de- 
scendants of Herod, king of Chalcis, from his decease to the end of the war. But 
he here uses the term "descendants" very loosely, or he forgets that Agrippa 
II was the nephew, and not the son of this monarch. (See the note of Lardner- 
Credibility, vol. i, p. 18, note g.) 



160 THE GOSPEL RECORDS : 

ical position,* and bear characters very agreeable to 
those which are assigned to them by the sacred 
writers. The vacillation of Pilate, his timidity, and, 
at the same time, his occasional violence,f the cru- 
elty, injustice, and rapacity of Felix,! and the com- 
paratively-equitable and mild character of Festus,§ 
are apparent in the Jewish historian, and have some 
sanction from other writers. 

It only remains to notice an objection that has 
been made to the evidence presented in the many 
historical allusions of the Evangelists, and their ver- 
ification by profane writers. It is said that there 
are remarkable facts in the Gospels, which we do not 
find alluded to by profane historians, though we 

* The procuratorship of Pilate lasted from the twelfth year of Tiberius — A. 
D. 26 — to the twenty-second — A. D. 36. (See Joseph., Ant. Jud., xviii, 3, § 2; 
4, § 2.) Felix entered upon his office as sole procurator in the twelfth year of 
Claudius — A. D. 53 — and was succeeded by Porcius Festus early in the reign of 
Nero, (Ant. Jud., xx, 7, § 1 ; 8, § 9.) 

f The vacillation and timidity of Pilate appear in his attempt to establish the 
images of Tiberius in Jerusalem, followed almost immediately by their with- 
drawal. (Ant. Jud., xvii, 3, § 1.) His violence is shown in his conduct toward 
the Jews who opposed his application of the Temple money to the construction 
of an aqueduct at Jerusalem, (Ibid., § 2,) as well as in his treatment of the Sa- 
maritans on the occasion which led to his removal. (Ibid., iv, § 1.) Agrippa 
the elder speaks of the iniquity of his government in the strongest terms, (Ap. 
Philon., Leg. ad Caium, p. 1,034:) "He feared lest they should examine and ex- 
pose the misdeeds of his former procuratorship, the taking of bribes, the acts 
of violence, the extortions, the tortures, the menaces, the repeated murders 
without any form of trial, the harsh and incessant cruelty." 
- % Tacitus says of Felix: "Antonius Felix exercised the royal authority in a 
manner agreeable to the baseness of his dispositiou, with all cruelty and wan- 
tonness." (Hist., v, 9.) And again: "But his father, whose surname was Felix, 
did not conduct himself with the same moderation. Having been a long time 
governor of Judea, he thought he could commit all crimes with impunity, rely- 
ing on his great power." (Ann., xii, 54.) Josephus gives a similar account of 
his government. (Ant. Jud., xx, 8.) After he quitted office he was accused to 
the emperor, and only escaped a severe sentence by the influence which his 
brother Pallas possessed with Nero. 

I See Ant. Jud., xx, 8, §§ 10, 11 ; Bell. Jud., ii, 14, g 1. In the latter passage 
Josephus says: "Now Festus having succeeded this man in the office of procu- 
rator, relieved the country of its greatest scourge. For he captured a large 
number of the robbers, and destroyed not a few. But Albinus, who succeeded 
Festus, did not govern after the same manner. For it is not possible to mention 
any form of evil-doing which he omitted to practice." 



THEIR AUTHENTICITY. 161 

might justly expect them to have attracted their at- 
tention. We shall speak of these in § 23. 

Great stress is laid upon the difficulty with regard 
to the taxing of Cyrenius. A satisfactory solution 
of this and a few other minor difficulties, the reader 
will find in most of the Commentaries. 3Ir. Eawlin- 
son closes his historical review with the following 
remarks: "We have found that the historical books 
of the Xew Testament contain a vast body of inci- 
dental allusions to the civil history of the times, 
capable of being tested by comparison with the 
works of profane historians. TVe have submitted the 
greater part of these incidental allusions to the test 
of such comparison ; and we have found, in all but 
some three or four doubtful cases, an entire and 
striking harmony. In no case have we met with 
clear and certain disagreement; in such cases we 
must take into consideration that profane writers are 
not infallible ; Josephus, our chief profane authority 
for the time, has been shown, even in matters where 
he does not come into any collision with the Chris- 
tian Scriptures, to teem with inaccuracies. If, there- 
fore, in any case it should be thought that we must 
choose between Josephus and an Evangelist, sound 
criticism requires that we should prefer the latter to 
the former. Josephus is not entirely honest; he has 
his Roman masters to please, and he is prejudiced in 
favor of his own sect, the Pharisees. He has been 
convicted of error, which is not the case with any 
Evangelist. His authority, therefore, is, in the eyes 
of a historical critic, inferior to that of the Gospel 
writers, and in any instance of contradiction, it 
would be necessary to disregard it. In fact, however, 

we are not reduced to this necessity. The Jewish 

14 



\ 



162 THE GOSPEL RECORDS : 

writer no where actually contradicts the Gospel Eec- 
ords, and in hundreds of instances he confirms them. 
It is evident that the entire historical framework, in 
which the Gospel picture is set, is real ; that the facts 
of the civil history, small and great, are true, and 
the personages correctly depicted." We have only 
to add that such correctness could not have been at- 
tained, unless the Gospels were written by the men, to 
whom they are ascribed, who were living in the age in 
which the events described by them took place. 

§ 17. The Relation of the Four Gospels to Each Other 
and to the acts of the apostles. 

In the case of three out of the five historical books 
of the New Testament, there is an internal testimony 
to their composition by cotemporaries, which is of 
no small importance. "And he that saw it," says 
John, "bare record, and his record is true, and he 
knoweth that he says true, that ye may believe." 
(John xix, 35.) And again, still more explicitly, 
after speaking of himself, he says : " This is the dis- 
ciple which testifieth of these things and wrote these 
things; and we know that his testimony is true." 
(John xxi, 24.) Either, therefore, John must be al- 
lowed to have been the writer of the fourth Gospel, 
or the writer must be deemed guilty of willful fraud. 

That the Acts of the Apostles and the third Gos- 
pel have a "testimony of a particular kind," which 
seems to give them a special claim to be accepted as 
the works of a cotemporary, is admitted even by 
Strauss. The writer of the Acts, he allows, "by the 
use of the first person, identifies himself with the 
companion of Paul," and the prefaces of the two 
books make it plain that they "proceeded from the 



THEIR AUTHENTICITY. 163 

same author." Yet, while Strauss does not venture 
to deny that a companion of Paul may have written 
the two works, he finds it "difficult" to believe that 
this was actually the case, and "suspects" that the 
passages of the Acts, where the first person is used, 
"belong to a distinct memorial by another hand, 
which the author of the Acts has incorporated into 
his history "(!) Eut still he allows the alternative — 
that "it is possible the companion of Paul may have 
composed the two works" — only it must have been 
"at a time when he was no longer protected by 
apostolic influence from the tide of tradition, "(!) and 
so was induced to receive into his narrative, and join 
with whau he had heard from the apostle, certain 
marvelous — and, therefore, incredible — stories which 
had no solid basis. A hypothesis like this is not 
worthy of a serious refutation. The Acts, as is clear 
from the fact of their terminating where they do, 
were composed at the close of Paul's first imprison- 
ment at Koine, A. D. 58 — or 63, according to some 
writers — and the Gospel, as being the "former trea- 
tise," must have been written earlier. 

We may, therefore, independently of the general 
voice of antiquity on the authenticity of the third 
Gospel, allow it to have been composed by one who 
lived in the apostolic age and companied with the 
apostles. And a new argument is presented to us for 
the early date of the first and second, based upon 
their accordance with the third, their resemblance to 
it in style and general character, and their diversity 
from the productions of any other period. The first 
three Gospels belong so entirely to the same school 
of thought, and the same type and stage of language, 
that, on critical grounds, they must be regarded as 



164 THE GOSPEL RECORDS : 

the "works of coteraporaries ; while in their contents 
they are at once so closely accordant with one an- 
other, and so full of little differences, that we must 
assign to them an almost instantaneous origin. So 
peculiar is their relation to each other that the au- 
thenticity of one involves that of the others. If the 
evidence for either of the Gospels had been much 
weaker than that for the other three, its discrepan- 
cies from them, if there had been no other cause, 
would have decided its rejection. Moreover, if one 
of the gospels had been published much in advance 
of the others, it is not probable that a second account 
of the ministry of Christ, confirmatory to any great 
extent of the preceding one, would have been written. 
A supplementary gospel, like that of John, might of 
conrse have been added in any case; but had the 
Gospel of Matthew, for instance, been composed, as 
some have supposed, before the separation of the 
apostles and the formation of distinct Christian com- 
munities, it would have been carried, together with 
Christianity, into all parts of the world ; and it is 
very unlikely that, in that case, the Gospels of Mark 
and Luke, which cover chiefly the same ground, 
would have been written. The need of written gos- 
pels was not felt at first, while the apostles and com- 
panions of Christ were in full vigor, and were contin- 
ually moving from place to place, relating with all 
the fullness and variety of oral discourse the miracles 
which they had seen wrought, and the gracious words 
which they had heard uttered by their Master. But, 
as they grew old, and as the sphere of their labors 
enlarged, and personal superintendence of the whole 
Church by the apostolic body became difficult, the de- 
sire to possess a written gospel arose, and simultane- 



THEIR AUTHENTICITY. 165 

ously, in different parts of the Church, for different 
portions of the Christian body, the three Gospels of 
Matthew, Mark, and Luke were published. 

The peculiar relation of the synoptic Gospels to one 
another, and to the Gospel of John, and the points 
which modern criticism has made on this relation 
with reference to their inspiration, the reader will 
find fully discussed in Part IV. It is sufficient, here, 
to quote the following remarks of Dr. Lange on the 
bearing which the peculiar relation of the Gospels to 
each other have on their authenticity. He says: 
" The attempts that have been made, in modern 
times, to prove that the four Gospels weaken each 
other's authority have had the very opposite result. 
By their mutual relation to each other the Gospels 
gain the compactedness of a house hewn into a rock; 
for the relation of their differences and points of 
agreement is so peculiar that sound criticism finds in 
them, after every new investigation, four independent 
witnesses for one and the same fact, and accordingly, 
also, for each other. If, for instance, a critic wishes 
to disprove the authority of the Gospel of John, he 
recognizes that of three synoptic Gospels in order to 
gain a point of attack against the fourth Gospel. But 
the points of agreement between this and the three 
other Gospels prove so many and so strong, that, by 
recognizing the authority of the latter, the former is 
virtually, also, recognized. Or, the Gospel of John is 
taken for the authentic record of the Gospel history, 
and the differences between this and the three other 
Gospels are pointed out in order to shake thereby 
the authority of the latter. But in this case, also, 
the force of the agreement between the two sets of 
documents proves stronger than that of the differ- 



166 THE GOSPEL BECOKDS : 

ences, so that, if the fourth Gospel is true, the subject 
matter of the three others must also be true. Again 
Luke and Matthew are taken in hand to undermine 
the authority of Mark. But Mark has so much in 
common with the two others, that if he falls they 
must fall with him, while at the s.ame time his pecul- 
iarities establish his independent authority. So, if 
the second Gospel is made the original Gospel at the 
expense of the first and third, Matthew and Luke 
have so much that is peculiar to them, that their own 
originality is placed beyond any and every reasonable 
doubt, while they have, at the same time, so much in 
common with Mark, that the recognition of the latter 
involves that of their own authority. In all these 
different directions the Gospels have been attacked 
by modern criticism, but all such attacks have proved 
futile. Their peculiar relation to one another is a 
fine net of truth, spread out to catch all impure criti- 
cism, and to entangle the critics in their own contra- 
dictions. Or we may compare the four Gospels to a 
wondrous grove, in which a magic influence makes 
the godless critics run to and fro in utter confusion, 
finding neither ingress nor egress. This magic influ- 
ence proceeds from the circle of the four Gospels, 
because, from the fourfold refraction of the One 
Light of the world, there are issuing a thousand daz- 
zling reflections for every oblique look, while the 
straightforward look sees in the fourfold refraction 
but the one Sun of the day. We may say that the 
relation of the four Gospels to each other, while it 
courts and challenges the spirit of criticism more 
than any single one for itself, becomes in turn the 
withering critique of every false criticism. When- 
ever criticism undertakes to undermine one Gospel 



THEIR AUTHENTICITY. 167 

through the other, it overlooks the mysterious links 
that bind them together, and thus digs its own grave. 
While the four Gospels testify to the Divine origin 
which they have in common, so completely and so 
mysteriously, that every impure critique is put to 
shame, they are in their outward form so purely hu- 
man, that they thereby invite critical examination; 
and they rest on so firm a basis that every new ex- 
amination can only bring them additional gain." 

£ 18. The Authenticity of the Gospels — a Postulate of 

Reason, as it alone Accounts for the Existence 

of the Christian Church, and for some of 

Paul's Epistles, whose Authenticity 

is Universally Admitted. 

The Christian Church is in the world, and has been 
in it a little more than eighteen centuries ; that it 
can be traced back to the historically-attested death 
of Christ is placed beyond the possibility of a doubt 
by heathen and Jewish as well as Christian writers. 
Josephus, born 37 A. D., says, in a passage, of which 
we will include in brackets what has been justly de- 
clared to have been interpolated: "About this time 
Jesus appears, a wise man, [if it is right to call him 
a man, for he was] performing surprising deeds, [a 
teacher of men, who willingly received the truth,] 
and many Jews as well as heathen became his fol- 
lowers; [being the Messiah] on the accusations of our 
chief men, Pilate condemned him to the cross; nev- 
ertheless, those who had loved him before did not 
give up their faith in him ; [for he appeared to them 
alive on the third day, as the prophets had predicted 
of him, besides many other marvelous things,] and 
the generation of Christians, that are named after 



168 THE GOSPEL RECORDS: 

him, is not extinct to this day." (Ant. Jud., XVIII, 
3, § 3.) In another passage, which can not be justly 
suspected, Josephus, who grew up at Jerusalem till 
he was twenty-six years of age, and was thus a wit- 
ness of the principal occurrences at Jerusalem, men- 
tioned in the Acts, subsequently to the accession of 
Herod Agrippa, says : "Ananus .... called the 
council of judges, and bringing before them James, 
the brother of Jesus, who was called Christ, and cer- 
tain others, he accused them of transgressing the 
laws, and delivered them up to be stoned." (Ant. 
Jud., XX, 9, § 1.) There existed, therefore, accord- 
ing to the testimony of Josephus, in the early part 
of the first century, a body of followers of Christ. 
Tacitus, the Eoman historian, who wrote in the sec- 
ond half of the first century, says, (Ann., XY, 44,) 
speaking of the fire which consumed Eome in Nero's 
time, and of the general belief that he had caused it: 
"In order, therefore, to put a stop to the report, he 
laid the guilt, and inflicted the severest punishments 
upon a set of people who were holden in abhorrence 
for their crimes, and called by the vulgar, Christians. 
The founder of that name was Christ, who suffered death 
in the reign of Tiberius, under his Procurator, Pontius 
Pilate. This pernicious superstition, thus checked for 
a while, broke out again, and spread not only over 
Judea, where the evil originated, but through Rome also, 
whither ail things that are horrible and shameful 
find their way, and are practiced. Accordingly, the 
first who were apprehended confessed, and then on 
their information a vast multitude were convicted, not 
so much of the crime of setting Eome on fire, as of 
hatred to mankind." Suetonius says briefly in refer- 
ence to the same occasion : " The Christians were 



THEIR AUTHENTICITY. 169 

punished, a set of men of a new and mischievous su- 
perstition." (Vita Her., § 16.) The younger Pliny, 
while he was Governor of Bithynia, says, in an 
official report to Trajan : "They [that is, those Chris- 
tians who recanted] declared that the whole of their 
guilt, or their error, was, that they were accustomed 
to meet on a stated day, before it was light, and to 
sing in concert a hymn of praise to Christ, as God, 
and to bind themselves by an oath, not for the per- 
petration of any wickedness, but that they would not 
commit any theft, robbery, or adultery, nor violate 
their word, nor refuse, when called upon, to restore 
any thing committed to their trust. After this, they 
were accustomed to separate, and then to reassemble 
to eat in common a harmless meal. Even this, how- 
ever, they ceased to do, after my edict, in which, 
agreeably to your commands, I forbade the meeting 
of secret assemblies. After hearing this, I thought 
it the more necessary to endeavor to find out the 
truth by putting to the torture two female slaves, 
who were called 'deaconesses.' But I could discover 
nothing but a perverse and extravagant superstition ; 
and therefore I deferred all further proceedings till 
I should consult with you. For the matter appears 
to me worthy of such consultation, especially on ac- 
count of the number of those icho are involved in peril. 
For many of every age, of every rank, and of either 
sex are exposed, and will be exposed to danger. Nor 
has the contagion of this superstition been confined 
to the cities only, but it has extended to the villages, 
and even to the country. Nevertheless, it still seems 
possible to arrest the evil, and to apply a remedy. 
At least, it is very evident that the temples, ichich had 

already been almost deserted, begin to be frequented, 

15 



170 THE GOSPEL RECORDS : 

and the sacred solemnities, so long interrupted, are 
again revived; and the victims, which heretofore 
could hardly find a purchaser, are now every- where 
in demand. From this it is easy to imagine what a 
multitude of men might be reclaimed, if pardon should 
be offered to those who repent." (Pliny, Ep. X, 97.) 
It is not necessary to quote any more testimonies 
concerning the existence of a great body of Chris- 
tians before the close of the first century. 

Now, to some of these Christians at various places 
the apostles addressed their Epistles, and there are 
no valid reasons for entertaining any doubt concern- 
ing their authorship, except, perhaps, in the case of 
that to the Hebrews, and of the two shorter Epistles 
which are assigned to John. All these Epistles are 
not only consistent with, but imperatively demand, our 
belief in the authenticity of such historical documents 
as our four Gospels are. It is indisputable that the 
writers, and those to whom they wrote, believed in 
the recent occurrence of a set of facts similar to, or 
identical with, those recorded in the Gospels and the 
Acts, especially those fundamental facts upon which 
the Christian faith rests. " Great is the mystery of 
godliness," says Paul. " God was manifest in the 
flesh, justified in the Spirit, seen of angels, preached 
unto the Gentiles, believed on in the world, received 
up into glory." (1 Tim. iii, 16.) " Christ," says Peter, 
" suffered once for sins, the just for the unjust, that 
he might bring us to God, being put to death in the 
flesh, but quickened in the Spirit." (1 Peter iii, 18.) 
"He received from God the Father honor and glory, 
when there came such a voice to him from the excel- 
lent glory: This is my beloved Son in whom I am 
well pleased ; and this voice which came from heaven 



THEIR AUTHENTICITY. 171 

we heard, when we were with him in the holy 
mount." (2 Peter i, 17, 18.) "God raised up Christ 
from the dead, and gave him glory." (1 Peter i, 21.) 
" He is gone into heaven, and is on the right hand 
of God, angels and authorities and powers being made 
subject to him." (1 Peter iii, 22.) "Kemeniber," says 
Paul, "that Jesus Christ of the seed of David was 
raised from the dead." (2 Tim. ii, 2, 8.) "If Christ 
be not risen, then is our preaching vain, and your 
faith also is vain." (1 Cor. xv, 14.) "I delivered 
unto you first of all that which I also received, how 
that Christ died for our sins according to the Scrip- 
tures ; and that he was buried, and that he rose again 
the thud day according to the Scriptures; and that 
he was seen of Cephas, then of the twelve, after that 
he was seen of James, then of all the apostles." (1 
Cor. xv, 3-7.) These are only half a dozen texts out 
of hundreds which might be adduced to show that 
Paul represented the death of Christ on the cross, as 
necessary to procure the pardon of our sins, or to 
make that pardon consistent with God's justice and 
truth ; he does not mention the charge on which he 
was condemned to this ignominious death, but that 
was necessarily implied. It was a Eoman punish- 
ment, and Pilate could not condemn a public teacher, 
whose morals were spotless, on any other charge than 
that which the Evangelists state at large, and which 
no enemy of Christ gainsayed, to which He himself 
pleaded guilty in reply to the adjuration of Caiaphas; 
namely, "that he said, he was the Christ, the Son of 
God" — a declaration by which the Eoman governor, 
interpreting it according to the well-known Jewish 
notions of the Messiah, understood Jesus to have pro- 
claimed himself "the king of the Jews;" on which 



172 THE GOSPEL RECORDS: 

account he wrote that charge on the tablet over the 
cross. Paul tells us, (Gal. i, 12,) that he had received 
his Gospel by the revelation of Jesus Christ, and he 
proves it by preaching the same Christ, whom the 
four Evangelists delineate. Matthew records the last 
commission of Jesus, commanding his disciples to 
baptize all nations " in the name of the Father, and 
of the Son, and of the Holy Ghost." God is here 
called Father, Son, and Holy Ghost, and the same 
divinity is claimed for the Son and Holy Ghost as for 
the Father. John calls Jesus in his antemundane 
state " the Word, that was with God from the begin- 
ning, and that was God," and says: "the Word be- 
came flesh." Paul teaches Christ's divinity proper, 
and his incarnation not less distinctly and emphatic- 
ally than John or Matthew. "To us there is but one 
God, the Father, of whom are all things, and we in 
him ; and one Lord Jesus Christ, by whom are all 
things, and we by him." (1 Cor. viii, 6.) " Ye know 
the grace of our Lord Jesus Christ, that, though he 
was rich, yet for your sakes he became poor, that ye 
through his poverty might be rich." (2 Cor. viii, 9.) 
" Let this mind be in you, which was also in Christ 
Jesus ; who, being in the form of God, thought it not 
robbery to be equal with God ; but made himself of 
no reputation, and took upon him the form of a serv- 
ant, and was made in the likeness of men." (Phil, ii, 
6, 7.) " God sent his own Son in the likeness of sin- 
ful flesh." (Eom. viii, 3, 32.) These are only a few 
texts out of a hundred, which might be adduced to 
show that the writers of the Epistles entirely agree 
with the Evangelists, as to the facts on which Chris- 
tianity is based, and as strongly assert their reality. 
If we find in Paul's Epistles some doctrines that are 



THEIR AUTHENTICITY. 173 

not in the Gospels, and if others are set forth more 
fully and distinctly, it is exactly what we have to 
expect according to John xvi, 12-14. 

But we will go a step further and make the argu- 
ment more direct and more pointed in giving it a 
strictly historical character. " Christianity or revealed 
religion is," as Eawlinson remarks in the opening of 
his Lectures on the "Historical Evidences," "in noth- 
ing more distinguished from the other religions of the 
world, than in its objective or historical character. 
The religions of Greece and Eome, of Egypt, India, 
Persia, and the East generally, were speculative sys- 
tems, which did not even seriously postulate* a histor- 
ical basis. But it is otherwise with the religion of 
the Bible. There, whether we look to the Old or the 
ISTew Testament, to the Jewish dispensation, or to the 
Christian, we find a scheme of doctrine which is 
bound up with facts ; which depends absolutely upon 
them, and which is null and void without them." 
The truth of this remark we will illustrate and con- 
firm by a consideration of the incontestable facts im- 
plied in TauVs Epistle to the Romans, the Corinthians, 
and the Galatians — Epistles which, even by those critics 
who have assailed the authenticity of every other 
portion of the New Testament Canon, are admitted to 
be authentic, that is, to have been composed by the man 
whose name they bear, at the time and for the class of 
readers that are claimed for them. 

There was in the churches in Galatia and at Cor- 
inth a party which denied the apostolic authority of 
Paul, which saw in him, at best, an apostle's disciple. 
Paul, in vindicating his apostolic authority, apjDeals 
to his call by the risen Savior, and to his possessing 
the power to work miracles. He commences the 



174 THE GOSPEL RECORDS: 

Epistle to the Galatians with these words : " Paul, an 
apostle, not of men, neither by man, but by Jesus 
Christ and God the Father, who raised him from the 
dead." The mention of the resurrection of Christ, in 
this connection, is evidently made to remind the Ga- 
latians that he had seen the risen Savior as well as 
the other apostles. It appears from verses 13-17, 
that they were well acquainted with his former en- 
mity against Christ and his disciples, and with the 
miraculous event which resulted in his conversion. 
In 1 Cor. xv, 8, the apostle tells the Corinthians that 
the risen Savior was seen (axpO'/j) by him, as he had 
been seen by others, and, 1 Cor. ix, 1, he bases his 
apostleship upon his personal knowledge of Christ, 
obtained by actual sight (iwpaxa.) From this sight, 
which took place with the natural eye, in a state of 
perfect self-consciousness, Paul distinguishes a vision, 
of which he himself does not know whether he had 
it in or out of the body. (2 Cor. xii, 1, 2.) Yet the 
personal manifestation of the risen Savior, narrated 
Acts ix, although it was the most important in point 
of its effects and differed also in its nature from sub- 
sequent manifestations of the Lord, was not an isola- 
ted fact in the life of the apostle, but only the grand 
opening act of his personal communion with the Lord. 
He appeals in different places to especial revelations 
of Christ on doctrinal points, in full accordance with 
what the Lord had told him at his conversion : " I 
have appeared unto thee for this purpose, to make 
thee a minister both of these things which thou hast 
seen, and of those things in the which I will appear 
unto thee." 

Now, what deductions are we compelled to draw 
from what Paul writes to the Galatians and Corinthi- 



THEIR AUTHENTICITY. 1(0 

ans respecting his having seen the risen Savior? If 
he has told the truth, if Christ appeared to him. then 
the truth of what the Evangelists have reported of 
the resurrection of Christ receives an incontestable 
confirmation, and the verity of that fact involves the 
authenticity of the Gospels. The latter has never been 
called in question by any who admit the resurrection 
of Jesus. It is attacked simply, as we shall show in 
the next Part, on the ground of the miraculous ele- 
ments of the Gospel narratives. Whoever admits the 
miracle of Christ's resurrection can not object to the 
other miracles recorded in the Gospels. 

But is Paul's testimonv of having seen the risen 
Savior trustworthy? Was he a man of veracity, and 
of a sound mind? Has he told the truth? We an- 
swer : 1. If Christ did not appear to Paul, neither 
did he receive those miraculous powers to which he 
appealed in vindication of his apostolic authority. 
in letters whose authenticity, even those who assail 
every other portion of the Xew Testament Canon 
have felt themselves compelled to acknowledge. And 
how were, then, the Galatians and Corinthians brought 
to believe his Gospel of a risen Savior? 2. If Paul 
has not told the truth, we must set him down either 
as one of the most stupid victims of a disordered 
imagination, or as a willful impostor. For we must 
bear in mind that he did not become an apostle for 
the promulgation of mere theories or speculations, 
such as would admit of both intellect and candor. 
All he preached was based upon his testimony of the 
fact of the resurrection of the crucified Redeemer. 

Can we conceive the author of such a composition 
as the Epistle to the Eomans to have been the 
wretched dupe of an entirely unaccountable self-de- 



176 THE GOSPEL RECORDS: 

ception? That he was — far from being a weak, 
minded enthusiast or fanatic — a man of gigantic in- 
tellect, high culture, dialectic skill, inflexible purpose, 
and indomitable courage, the destructive criticism of 
modern infidelity must unwillingly admit, inasmuch 
as, in order to put the person of Christ out of the 
way, Paul is made the self-constituted founder of the 
Christian Church, and, consequently, the author of 
the whole modern civilization and culture. 

Or was Paul a willful impostor? Is it conceivable 
that he should have blasted all his earthly prospects, 
and subjected himself to unceasing privations and 
sufferings, (2 Cor. xi, 23-27,) in order to make Jews 
and Gentiles believe what, in the case supposed, he 
must have known to be a lie? The thought is as 
great an outrage upon common-sense, and as black a 
libel upon humanity as it is a daring blasphemy 
against God. Hear how the apostle himself affirms his 
candor and soberness: "Yourselves, brethren, know 
our entrance in unto you, that it was not in vain. 
. For our exhortation was not of deceit, 
nor of uncleanness, nor in guile. But as we were 
allowed of God to be put in trust with the Gospel, 
even so we speak, not as pleasing men, but God, 
which trieth our hearts." (1 Thess. ii, 1, 3, 4.) 
"Therefore, seeing we have this ministry, as we have 
received mercy, we faint not; but have renounced the 
hidden things of dishonesty, not walking in crafti- 
ness, nor handling the Word of God deceitfully; but 
by manifestation of the truth commending ourselves 
to every man's conscience in the sight of God." (2 
Cor. iv, 1, 2.) "If Christ be not risen, then is our 
preaching vain, and your faith is also vain. Yea, and 
we are found false witnesses of God, because we have 



THEIR AUTHENTICITY. 177 

testified of God that he raised up Christ 

If in this life only we have hope in Christ, we are of 
all men most miserable." (1 Cor. xv, 14, 15, 19.) 

So much with regard to Paul's testimony of having 
seen the risen Savior. Let us also consider what he 
says concerning the existence of miraculous powers 
in the primitive Churches. In the Epistle to the 
Corinthians (1 Cor. xii-xiv) the apostle speaks of cer- 
tain extraordinary gifts, (charismata.) not for the 
purpose of proving their reality, or instructing his 
readers about their origin, but taking their existence 
for granted, he merely gives direction about their 
proper use. He mentions the gift of healing, proph- 
ecy, the discerning of spirits, and working of miracles. 
If the existence of these gifts had not been an in- 
contestable fact, the apostle could not have written 
thus to a society of Christians, a part of whom did 
not recognize his apostolical authority, for it would 
have given his opponents the best means to destroy 
all confidence in him even as a man of veracity. In 
the Epistle to the Romans, (c. xii, 6.) these gifts are 
likewise referred to. In Galatians iii, 5, we meet 
again the working of miracles. Thus these charis- 
mata appear in all the Churches, however remote 
from each other they are. In the Epistle to the Gala- 
tians the apostle has a special object in appealing to 
them. The Galatians had been shaken in their 
Christian faith, and were in danger of apostatizing 
from the Gospel which Paul had preached to them. 
He reminds them that they had received, through 
his preaching of the Gospel, the Holy Spirit and the 
power to work miracles. Kow, if they had not re- 
ceived these powers, how could the apostle have 
dared to argue thus? In vindicating his apostleship 



178 THE GOSPEL RECORDS: 

against his detractors at Corinth, he appeals to the 
miracles performed by himself before their eyes: 
" The signs of an apostle were wrought among you 
in all patience, in signs, wonders, and mighty deeds." 
According to Acts xviii, 11, 18, the apostle was at 
Corinth some eighteen months. Prom his miracles 
not being mentioned there, we see that the writers 
of the ]STew Testament did not eagerly mention every 
miracle of which they had knowledge, but passed by 
many in silence for the reason given by John in his 
Gospel, (c. xx, 30 ; xxi, 25.) 

Other epistles of Paul show a decline of these 
charismata in the Churches; in his pastoral letters 
the apostle finds it necessary to point out the proper 
qualifications of a minister of the Gospel, undoubt- 
edly because the rich stream of miraculous gifts had 
comparatively ceased to flow, and they no longer 
pointed out to the Churches the proper persons for 
the various offices. The Epistle to the Hebrews, no 
matter by whom it was written, was certainly writ- 
ten before the close of the first century; Clement of 
Pome quotes from it largely, and internal evidences 
demonstrate that it was composed while the Temple 
worship was still in its full glory. The believing 
Jews, like the Galatians, came in danger of aposta- 
tizing from the faith; for this reason they are re- 
minded, (Heb. ii, 4,) of the miracles performed among 
them and accompanying the preaching of the Gos- 
pel by those who had heard the Lord. These mirac- 
ulous powers appear here in nearly the same order in 
which they stand, 2 Cor. xii, 12. We have thus the 
strongest evidence that there was no difference in 
this respect between the Jewish and heathen converts, 
that the one enjoyed these gifts as well as the other 



THEIE AUTHENTICITY. 179 

From this fact we have to infer that the Lord him- 
self wrought such miracles as are recorded in the 
Gospels, for the Master was certainly not inferior to 
his disciples, and it is expressly so stated, Heb. ii, 4. 
The Acts of the Apostles and the Epistles of Paul 
sustain the nearest relation to each other, and are 
wonderfully confirmed one by the other. The inci- 
dental allusions in the Epistles to facts related at 
length in the Acts, and vice versa, as well as the 
mention of facts in the one that are omitted in the 
other, complete each other. 'No less striking is the 
agreement between the Acts of the Apostles and the 
Gospels. 

§ 19. The Absurdity of the Mythical Theory. 

Unless all the arguments by which we have estab- 
lished the authenticity of the Gospel records are of 
no account, the mythical theory, laid down by Strauss 
in his " Life of Jesus," has no ground on which it 
can stand, and deserves no formal refutation. To 
state it is to refute it ; and inasmuch as no English 
or German writer has stated this theory so clearly 
and fairly as 3Ir. Norton, we will give his statement, 
showing thereby how utterly futile this last effort of 
infidelity is to explain the origin of Christianity or 
any one essential fact connected with its origin. 

The external testimonies for the authenticity Strauss 
sets aside by simply making the following assertions : 
" The most ancient testimonies tell us, firstly, that an 
apostle, or some other person who had been ac- 
quainted with an apostle, wrote a Gospel history; 
but not whether it was identical with that which 
afterward came to be circulated in the Church under 
his name; secondly, that writings similar to our 



180 THE GOSPEL RECORDS : 

Gospels were in existence, but not that they were as- 
cribed with certainty to any one apostle or companion 
of an apostle. Such is the uncertainty of these ac- 
counts, which, after all, do not reach further back 
than the third or fourth decade of the second cen- 
tury. According to all the rules of probability the 
apostles were all dead before the close of the first 
century, not excepting John, who is said to have 
lived till A. D. 100; concerning whose age and death, 
however, many fables were early invented. What an 
ample scope for attributing to the apostles manu- 
scripts they never wrote!" (Strauss, Life of Jesus, 
i, 62.) In the following passage he asserts still more 
emphatically, that the apostles and their associates 
are not to be held responsible for the fables contained 
in the Gospels : " The fact that many such compila- 
tions — as the Gospels — of narratives concerning the 
life of Jesus were already in general circulation 
during the lifetime of the apostles, and more espe- 
cially that any one of our Gospels was known to an 
apostle and acknowledged by him, can never be 
proved. With respect to isolated anecdotes, it is only 
necessary to form an accurate conception of Pales- 
tine and of the real position of the eye-witnesses re- 
ferred to, in order to understand that the origination 
of legends, even at so early a period, is by no means 
incomprehensible. Who informs us that they must 
necessarily have taken root in that particular district 
of Palestine where Jesus tarried longest, and where 
his actual history was well known ? And with re- 
spect to eye-witnesses, if by these we are to under- 
stand the apostles, it is to ascribe to them absolute 
ubiquity to represent them as present here and there 
weeding out all the unhistorical legends concerning 



THEIR AUTHENTICITY. 181 

Jesus, in whatever places they had chanced to spring 
up and nourish." (Ibid., i, 63, 64.) 

The internal evidences for the authenticity of the Gos- 
pels are entirely ignored by Strauss on account of the 
internal evidences which he sets up in opposition to 
them; namely, the contradictory statements which he 
charges upon the Evangelists, and the impossibility 
of miracles. As these two objections are directed 
against the historic verity or credibility of the Gos- 
pel records, we shall consider them in the next Part, 
and proceed now to the statement of the mythical 
theory itself in the words of Norton. 

As there was among the Jews an eager expectation 
of their Messiah, Jesus, at least during a part of his 
ministry, regarded himself as the Messiah, as "the 
greatest and last of the prophetic race." He was, 
consequently, so regarded by his followers. The ex- 
pectation, which the Jews entertained of their Mes- 
siah, was definite and " characterized by many im- 
portant particulars." They had formed many imag- 
inations concerning him connected with allegorical 
and typical misinterpretations of the Old Testament; 
and, after the appearance of Jesus, there were some 
among the Jews who converted their imaginations 
of what the Messiah was to be into fictions of what 
J^us had been, and embodied those fictions in a his- 
tory of his ministry. The Jewish people generally 
rejected him, as not their Messiah, and their leaders 
persecuted and crucified him as a religious impostor 
and blasphemer. Nor, according to Strauss, were 
the supposed fictions concerning him propagated by 
his immediate disciples, who had witnessed his deeds 
and listened to his words, his apostles, and their as- 
sociates ; nor, consequently, by those who knew and 



182 THE GOSPEL RECORDS : 

held the truth concerning him, as taught by them. 
To affirm that they were propagated by the apostles 
and their associates would be to maintain what the 
most reckless infidelity has shrunk from directly as- 
serting; namely, that the received history of Jesus 
is a collection of enormous falsehoods, fabricated by 
his immediate disciples, and preached by them with 
ineffable effrontery in the very face of those who 
knew them to be false. From this simple solution 
of the origin of our religion, the "mythical" theory 
of Strauss essentially differs ; for though he does not 
define the sense in which he uses the term u mythus" 
it is fundamental in his theory that mythi, and par- 
ticularly the mythi or fables concerning Jesus, are 
not generally intentional falsehoods. It is this char- 
acteristic alone which distinguishes it from the more 
obvious and base solution of the origin of Chris- 
tianity which has been adverted to. According to 
Strauss, the greater part of those fictions concerning 
Jesus, which are embodied in the Gospels, became 
connected with his history during the period of about 
thirty years which intervened between his death and 
the destruction of Jerusalem, (Strauss, i, 84,) that is, 
during the period throughout which many of his 
apostles and their associates — the first preachers of 
our religion — and the great body of those instructed 
by them were living. These fictions did not proceed 
from, nor were they countenanced by, them, nor were 
they received as true by those who relied on their 
authority. How, notwithstanding, they obtained such 
currency as almost immediately to obscure and oblit- 
erate his true history, is to be thus explained : 

The age, it is true, was "a historical age," by 
which term Strauss, I suppose, must be understood 



THEIR AUTHENTICITY. 183 

as meaning an age in which facts would be recorded, 
and mythological fables would not find ready cur- 
rency — but "the pure historic idea was never devel- 
oped among the Hebrews." " Indeed, no just notion 
of the true nature of history is possible, without 
a perception of the inviolability of the chain of 
finite causes and of the impossibility of miracles. 
This perception, which is wanting to so many minds 
of our own day, was still more deficient in Palestine, 
and, indeed, throughout the Eoman Empire. And to 
a mind still open to the reception of the marvelous, 
if it be once carried away by the tide of religious 
enthusiasm, all things will appear credible ; and 
should this enthusiasm lay hold of a yet wider cir- 
cle, it will awaken a new creative vigor even in a 
decayed people. To account for such an enthusiasm 
it is by no means necessary to presuppose the Gospel 
miracle as the existing cause. This may be found in 
the known religious dearth of that period, a dearth 
so great that the cravings of the mind after some re- 
ligious belief excited a relish for the most extrava- 
gant forms of worship ; secondly, in the deep religious 
satisfaction which was afforded by the belief in the 
resurrection of the deceased Messiah, and by the es- 
sential principles of the doctrine of Jesus." (Strauss, 
i, 64, 65.) 

The theory of Strauss necessarily supposes that 
Jesus was a conspicuous individual who acted strongly 
on the minds of men. Before this theory can be re- 
ceived, it becomes requisite to explain the very rapid 
growth of those most extraordinary fictions concern- 
ing him, which sprung up and flourished while very 
many of his cotemporaries were still living; espe- 
cially as by a great majority of those cotemporaries, 



184 THE GOSPEL RECORDS : 

bis enemies, they would be at once indignantly 
spurned and trampled under foot, as being, what 
they were, monstrous falsehoods ; while by another 
portion, the first adherents of Jesus, and the original 
witnesses of his ministry, their growth, to say the 
least, was not fostered — they did not rest on their 
testimony. Strauss has shown himself sensible that 
an explanation of this phenomenon is requisite; and 
the solution which he gives of the sudden develop- 
ment of such an array of fables concerning Jesus 
may be found in the following passage. It may be 
readily understood, if we bear in mind what has been 
before stated, that, according to his theory, the Jews 
had entertained many imaginations concerning their 
expected Messiah ; and that the process in forming 
the history of Jesus which has come down to us, 
consisted in converting these imaginations of what 
was to be into fables concerning Jesus. 

He says: "A frequently -raised objection still re- 
mains, . . . the objection, namely, that the space 
of about thirty years from the death of Jesus to the 
destruction of Jerusalem, during which the greater 
part of the narratives must have been formed — or 
even the interval extending to the beginning of the 
second century, the most distant period which can 
be allowed for the origin of even the latest of these 
Gospel narratives — is much too short to admit of the 
use of so rich a collection of mythi. But as we have 
shown, the greater part of these mythi did not arise 
during that period, for their first foundation was laid 
in the legends of the Old Testament before and after 
the Babylonish exile; and the transferrence of these 
legends, with suitable modifications, to the expected 
Messiah was made in the course of the centuries 



THEIR AUTHENTICITY. 185 

which elapsed between that exile and the time of 
Jesus. So that, for the period between the founda- 
tion of the first Christian community and the writing 
of the Gospels, there remains to be effected only the 
transference of Messianic legends, almost all ready 
formed, to Jesus, with some alterations to adapt them 
to Christian opinions and to the individual character 
and circumstances of Jesus ; only a very small pro- 
portion of mythi having to be formed entirely new." 
(Strauss, i, 84, 85.) This is the only explanation he 
affords. 

It appears, then, according to Strauss, that some 
time during the thirty or forty years after the death 
of our Lord, the small body of his followers among 
the Jews was divided into two parties of very dif- 
ferent characters. One was composed of his personal 
friends and followers, the apostles and their asso- 
ciates, who knew his true history and doctrines, and 
who did not propagate those falsehoods concerning 
him on which the religion of Christians is founded. 
The other was composed of persons who did propa- 
gate those falsehoods. These had their origin, as 
Strauss suggests, in districts of Palestine where Jesus 
did not tarry long, and where his actual history was 
not well known, and it would, he says, be ascribing 
absolute ubiquity to the apostles to suppose them to 
have been capable of being present here and there 
to weed out all the unhistorical legends concerning 
him in whatever places they had chanced to spring 
up and flourish. (Strauss, i, 63, 64.) Those who 
propagated these fictions concerning him had no in- 
tention of deceiving. They were unconscious of 
falsehood ; they believed that what they related had 

actually taken place. They had so little acquaintance 

16 



186 THE GOSPEL RECORDS: 

with Jesus or with the eye-witnesses of his ministry, 
that they did not know that all which they affirmed 
concerning him was untrue. On the contrary, they 
w^ere persuaded that it was true. But though, as 
Strauss suggests, their fictions may not originally 
"have taken root in that particular district of Pal- 
estine where Jesus tarried longest," (Strauss, i, 84,) 
yet, in order to make converts to the belief of them, 
it was necessary that they should be preached in 
parts of Palestine where our Lord had been well 
known, and where there could be no ignorance re- 
specting the essential facts in his ministry. Here, 
on the one hand, they would be indignantly and ve- 
hemently contradicted by the great body of the un- 
believing Jews, and on the other, they would be 
denied and discountenanced by the true followers of 
Christ. The innocent impostors, who, in their ig- 
norance, propagated unconsciously such enormous 
falsehoods concerning him, must have been surprised 
to find all those acquainted with the facts in his his- 
tory, whether friends or enemies, utterly confounded, 
to say the least, by their marvelous stories. One 
might think that their own confidence would have 
been shaken by the direct and authoritative evidence, 
which they must have encountered on every side, of 
the falsehood of their narrations. It might seem, 
moreover, that it would be impossible under such 
circumstances to procure converts to the belief of 
them. But such was not the case. Their own con- 
fidence was not shaken ; they persisted in promul- 
gating their stories, and they triumphed signally. 
They are the true authors of Christianity. It is to 
them we are indebted for the Gospels. Their fictions 
have supplanted the real history of Christ, the orig- 



THEIR AUTHENTICITY. 187 

inal testimony of eye-witnesses, and have become 
the foundation of Christian faith ! Nor is this all. 
Keeping themselves out of view, they have had com- 
plete success in putting their stories before the world 
as resting on the authority of the apostles and their 
associates, in making them responsible for their mar- 
velous tales. The whole Christian world has believed 
that these stories proceeded from apostles and their 
associates. But it was not so. They proceeded from 
another party among the followers of Jesus Christ, 
a party that does not appear in history, the existence 
of which is irreconcilable with all remaining records 
and memorials of the times when it is supposed to 
have nourished, utterly irreconcilable with all proba- 
bility, and which, therefore, was unknown to the 
world before its discovery by Strauss. 

It is to be borne in mind that the distinguishing 
characteristic of the theory of Strauss, the " myth- 
ical " theory of the origin of Christianity, consists in 
the supposition that the mythi or fictions in the his- 
tory of Jesus were not intentional fabrications for the 
purpose of deception, but that they sprang up, as it 
were, spontaneously; those among whom they orig- 
inated, and by whom they were propagated, being 
unconscious of falsehood. This fact is fully recog- 
nized by Strauss, though not clearly apprehended 
by him in its necessary relations. His reader should 
keep it in mind. We must not suffer ourselves to 
vacillate between two theories wholly inconsistent 
with each other. The apostles and their associates 
were, or were not, the most shameless of impostors. 
According to Strauss they were not impostors. It 
follows that the history of our Lord, which the Chris- 
tian world has received, was not derived from them, 



188 THE GOSPEL RECORDS : 

though it grew to its present form principally while 
the most, or many, of them were living. It pro- 
ceeded, therefore, from other individuals, of whom 
history has preserved no record, and who must have 
taught under the circumstances which have been 
described. 

We may next observe, that, however difficult was 
the task of these teachers of our present religion in 
persuading the cotemporaries and countrymen of an 
individual as conspicuous as our Lord must have 
been, to give credit to a history of him full of mar- 
vels that were utterly devoid of truth, yet this was 
not the sole, nor the greatest, difficulty which they 
are supposed to have overcome. This teaching con- 
sisted, as we are informed by Strauss, in identifying 
the history of Jesus with the anticipations of the 
Jews concerning their expected Messiah. The mythi 
respecting this imaginary personage were ready made 
for their use, and they had only to turn them into 
historical fictions, and accommodate them to Jesus. 

But every one knows what were the popular expect- 
ations of the Jews respecting their coming Messiah. 
Of him, David, the greatest of their kings, the founder 
of their monarchy, was, in their view, the especial 
type ; though in all by which the favor of God had 
distinguished David, the Messiah was to be far more 
distinguished. He, too, was to be a monarch, the 
restorer of the kingdom of Israel, a warrior, a con- 
queror, the deliverer and exciter of his people. Es- 
tablishing the seat of his empire at Jerusalem, he was 
to found a kingdom extending over the world, and 
enduring to the consummation of all things, over 
which he was to rule without a successor. This was 
the outline of their expectations, which, doubtless, 



THEIR AUTHENTICITY. 189 

before the coming of our Lord, was filled up, as it 
has been since, with many particular imaginations 
corresponding to its general character. 

But according to Strauss, it was the purpose of 
those who propagated the fabulous history of Jesus, 
to evince that he was the Messiah through the cor- 
respondence of its fictions with the previous expecta- 
tions of the Jews concerning the Messiah. This his- 
tory actually shows one striking point of resemblance 
in representing Jesus as the last great messenger of 
God to the Jewish nation endowed with miraculous 
powers. But the whole representation of the purpose 
and effects of his mission, of his personal character, 
of his humble condition in this world, of his determ- 
ined repression of all hope of worldly aggrandize- 
ment for himself, his followers, or his countrymen, 
of his annunciation to his immediate disciples that 
they must submit to poverty and suffering, and pre- 
pare themselves for the last outrage of persecution, 
together with the account of the apparent triumph 
of his enemies, and of his cruel death — this represent- 
ation, if it were a fiction, might seem to have been 
devised in direct opposition to the expectations of the 
Jews respecting their Messiah. 

But it may be said that the facts to which I have 
referred were so notorious that no other account could 
be given by the honest impostors, who, unconscious 
of falsehood, propagated the stories of his miracles. 
Certainly these facts were so notorious that no other 
account could be given but that which we have re- 
ceived. But such being the case, it follows that no 
attempt could be more hopeless or more foolish, than 
an attempt to persuade the Jews that the life and 
death, the character, acts, and teachings of Jesus 



190 THE GOSPEL RECORDS: 

corresponded to their previous expectations of the 
Messiah. So far, indeed, from their finding any such 
correspondence, we know that, during his ministry, 
and after his death, he was rejected by a very great 
majority of the nation, as disappointing all their 
hopes from a Messiah, and exasperating their strong- 
est prejudices. 

This theory of Strauss is, indeed, an outrage upon 
common-sense, if the preceding account of it be cor- 
rect, and no one will pretend that it is not. But we 
have as yet viewed this theory only under one aspect; 
namely, in its relation to the Jewish nation. We will 
consider it in some other very important relations in 
which its author has not presented it, and in regard 
to which he has, of course, given no explanation. 

The heathens believed the Gospel, and of the 
strength of their belief they gave sure proof by the 
marvelous change which it wrought in their hearts 
and lives, by the wide separation which it produced 
between them and the heathen world, by their readi- 
ness to submit to all the deprivations and evils which 
it brought upon them. Now, from whom did the 
heathens receive their knowledge of Christianity and 
of the Gospels ? The theory of Strauss admits of but 
one answer. According to this theory, they must 
have received it not from the main body of the Jew- 
ish Christians, but from those few mistaken men 
among them who, having little or no acquaintance 
with Jesus, propagated, unconscious of falsehood, those 
mythi concerning him with which the Gospels are 
filled, and who thus established in the world not 
merely a fabulous history of him, the professed Mes- 
siah of whom they knew nothing correctly, but like- 
wise a new religion, embracing the noblest principles 



THEIR AUTHENTICITY. 191 

of action, founded upon faith in one whose real his- 
tory they had obliterated or rendered doubtful, and 
whose character they had essentially misrepresented. 
This is the only answer which the theory of Strauss 
admits. But the only answer admitted by authentic 
history and indisputable fact is that the heathens 
were instructed in Christianity by the immediate fol- 
lowers and companions of our Lord, and by their as- 
sociates — by those who were perfectly aware whether 
their teaching was or was not true; that they received 
our religion from Barnabas, and Paul, and Luke, 
from Peter and Mark, from the apostle John, who 
resided so long among them, and from others asso- 
ciated with these early teachers. Above all, no de- 
gree of folly, certainly none to which a rational per- 
son can be required to give heed, will lead any one 
to pretend expressly that there is any evidence or 
any ground whatever for imagining that the Gospel 
was preached to the heathen world in two different- 
forms ; in one form by half-crazy fanatics, who filled 
the history of our Lord with stories of fictitious mir- 
acles, and in another, by his immediate followers and 
friends, who told the truth concerning him, what- 
soever that was. But turning from unquestionable 
truths, we will enter the regions of mere hypothesis. 
We will clear the ground, as far as possible, of those 
facts that stand in our way. The Epistles of Paul 
we will regard as forgeries, and the whole history of 
the propagation of Christianity, which may be gath- 
ered from the New Testament, as a fabrication. We 
will suppose that these Christians received their 
instruction in Christianity from the fanatical and 
ignorant portion of Christ's disciples. Every one 
knows what these teachers effected. Let us consider 



192 THE GOSPEL RECORDS I 

their means and the obstacles which they had to 
encounter. 

They were men very deficient in good sense. They 
had taken no pains to inform themselves correctly 
concerning the character, acts, and teaching of him 
whose disciples they professed to be, and whom they 
were so zealous in exhorting others to obey. They 
had, on the contrary, fallen into the grossest mistakes 
concerning them. God did not " bear them witness 
with signs, and wonders, and divers miracles, and 
gifts of the Holy Ghost." The pretense that he did 
so is merely one of those fables which are put for- 
ward throughout the New Testament. It was not 
only morally, but physically, impossible that they 
should produce any miraculous evidence of the truth 
of their fictions. JSTor were they distinguished for 
eloquence or ability of any sort, since, though they 
effected such an astonishing work, history has not 
even preserved their names, but has falsely substi- 
tuted for them those of other individuals — apostles 
of Christ and the associates of apostles. Such were 
the character and the facilities for accomplishing 
their purpose, possessed by these zealous missionaries 
of falsehood. What obstacles, then, had they to en- 
counter? 

According to Strauss their main purpose in their 
mythical history of Christ, which we now find in 
the Gospels, was to evince that a Messiah — named 
Jesus — had appeared among the Jews. This was the 
stoiy which they propagated in the heathen world. 
But the heathen world would have regarded only 
with indifference or ridicule such a story from such 
preachers — a story that a Messiah had appeared 
among the Jews,, a people toward whom the preva- 



THEIR AUTHENTICITY* 193 

lent feelings of the heathens had been those of dis- 
like and contempt; and in whose supposed good or 
ill fortune in the advent of their Messiah it must 
have been very hard to persuade them that they had 
any concern 

Admitting, however, that it were possible to ex- 
cite their attention to the subject, with what inef- 
fable scorn must tney have regarded the sort of 
evidence thus laid before them ! How would they 
have listened to proofs founded on a pretended cor- 
respondence between a body of incredible fictions 
and certain passages of a book called the Old Test- 
ament — a book for which they had no respect, which 
even many of them had never heard of, and which, 
it may be safely presumed, no one of them had 
read — which passages were represented to them as 
expressing typically or mystically what the Jews had 
expected concerning the Messiah? With how much 
patience would they have listened to these Jewish 
proselyting missionaries who had come among them, 
when these missionaries themselves told them that 
the person, whom they called on them to receive as 
the Jewish Messiah, had been rejected by his own 
nation as an impostor and blasphemer, and had, in 
consequence of his pretensions, suffered a public ex- 
ecution, as ignominious as it was cruel ? TThat must 
they have thought of this Jewish Messiah, the deliv- 
erer of his people, when he was preached to them 
after the destruction of Jerusalem and the dispersion 
of the Jewish nation ? Is it possible, an intelligent 
reader may ask, that any one can have been so be- 
wildered and confounded by irreligion and mysticism, 
as to imagine that the most astonishing moral revo- 
lution in the history of mankind, the establishment 

17 



194 TEE GOSPEL RECORDS: 

of Christianity in the heathen world, was effected by 
such agents, under such circumstances ? 

We add to Mr. Norton's critique of Strauss a few 
remarks : 

1. The mythical theory is a tissue of self-contra- 
dictory statements. One Gospel is rejected as spuri- 
ous, and then, again, treated as authentic, in order to 
prove from it the spuriousness of another. In one 
place we are told that the people, among whom these 
myths originated, were in a state of childish igno- 
rance and credulity, under the influence of an untu- 
tored, extravagant imagination; in another place we 
are called upon to admire the deep philosophy, lying 
at the bottom of these evangelical myths, the ex- 
pansive views, thorough analysis, and far-seeing sa- 
gacity of those ignorant and superstitious persons 
who propagated them! 

2. What we are called upon to believe by the myth- 
ical theory, is, in short, that Jesus — if he wrought 
no miracles, and was the subject of no miracles — 
contradicted, in every circumstance of his birth, and 
education, and teaching, and life, and death, the best 
established and most cherished notions of all around 
him, concerning the promised Messiah, and was, nev- 
ertheless, believed to be that Messiah. We are called 
upon to believe that miracles were ascribed to him, 
because the Messiah ought to have wrought miracles; 
that he was believed to have risen again, because it 
suddenly occurred to somebody that he ought to have 
risen again ; and that, by such a process as this ) a creed 
of fables was transmuted into a creed of facts, and, 
toward the close of the second century, stamped in- 
delibly, and with one impression, upon the faith 
and institutions of the great Christian communities 



THEIR AUTHENTICITY. 195 

throughout the world, so that the consentient tradi- 
tion of all these Churches ascribes their foundation 
to the first disciples of Jesus Christ, and our Gospels 
to those whose names they bear; and this tradition 
is confirmed by the universal observance of the 
sacraments, of the weekly Lord's day, and of Easter, 
the special festival in remembrance of Christ's resur- 
rection. 

3. That no speculative system, based upon the 
myth of an incarnate God, could have started such a 
revolution in the moral world, as has been produced 
by Christianity for over eighteen centuries, with the 
manifest destiny to leaven and change the whole 
world, is evident, from the fact, that all the philo- 
sophical elements, to which the mythical theory at- 
tributes the propagation of Christianity, are found 
in the lofty speculations of Plato, in the logology of 
Philo, and a host of Oriental myths, concerning in- 
carnations of Deity; but though they were in the 
world for centuries, they never exerted a world- 
renewing influence. 

4. "With this last effort," says Dr. Schaff, "infidel- 
ity seems to have exhausted its scientific resources. 
It can only repeat itself hereafter. Its different the- 
ories have all been tried and found wanting. One 
has in turn transplanted and refuted the other, even 
during the lifetime of their champions. They ex- 
plain nothing in the end; on the contrary, they only 
substitute an unnatural for a supernatural miracle, 
an inextricable enigma for a revealed mystery. They 
equally tend to undermine all faith in God's provi- 
dence, in history, and ultimately in every principle 
of truth and virtue, and they deprive a poor and 
fallen humanity, in a world of sin, temptation, and 



196 THE GOSPEL RECORDS: 

sorrow, of its only hope and comfort in life and in 
death. — The same negative criticism which Strauss 
applied to the Gospels, would, with equal plausibility, 
destroy the strongest chain of evidence before a court 
of justice, and resolve the life of Socrates, or Charle- 
magne, or Luther, or Napoleon, into a mythical 
dream. The secret of the mythical hypothesis is the 
pantheistic denial of a personal, living God, and the 
a priori assumption of the impossibility of a miracle. 
In its details it is so complicated and artificial, that 
it can not be made generally intelligible, and in pro- 
portion as it is popularized, it reverts to the vulgar 
hypothesis of intentional fraud, from which it pro- 
fessed, at the start, to shrink back in horror and 
contempt." 



PAET III. 
THE HISTORIC VERITY OF THE GOSPEL RECORDS. 



PART III. 

THE HISTORIC YERITY OF THE GOSPEL RECORDS. 



■♦*♦- 



§20, INTRODUCTORY REMARKS. 

In the preceding Part, the authenticity of the Gos- 
pels has been established by the most conclusive evi- 
dences. A book,. however, may be authentic; that is, 
it may have been written by the author by whom it 
claims to have been written, and yet have no claims 
upon our confidence ; that is, it may not be credible. 
Though this is rarely the case with historical books, 
and, in the nature of the case, inapplicable to such 
records as the Gospels, yet, we will consider them for 
the present, without any reference to their containing 
a divine revelation, and subject them to the same 
laws of historical criticism as may be applied to any 
historical record. 

199 



200 THE GOSPEL RECORDS: 



CHAPTER I. 

A CONSIDERATION OF THE OBJECTIONS THAT HAVE BEEN 

RAISED AGAINST THE CREDIBILITY OF 

THE EVANGELISTS. 

§ 21. The Alleged Discrepancies or Contradictions in the 

Four Gospels. 

It has been asserted that the Evangelists differ in 
some of their statements from each other to such a 
degree as to contradict each other. That we find 
their records as different as we should expect them, 
from independent writers, is admitted ; but it can be 
satisfactorily shown, that they are not of such a 
nature as to impair their character as faithful and 
trustworthy reporters. The charge of alleged con- 
tradictions will be refuted in detail, in the interpret- 
ation of the respective passages to which the charge 
refers; such, for instance, as the difference with re- 
gard to the hour of the crucifixion of our Lord. Here 
we confine ourselves to general remarks : 

1. The differences adduced, consist mostly of omis- 
sions by one Evangelist of what is mentioned by 
another, such omissions being regarded by Strauss 
as equivalent to direct negatives.* Throughout his 

* With regard to the Annunciation, for instance, Mr. Rawlinson observes, we 
find the following enumeration of discrepancies: "1. The individual who ap- 
pears is called, in Matthew, an angel of the Lord; in Luke, the angel Gabriel. 2. The 
person to whom the angel appears is, according to Matthew, Joseph ; according 
to Luke, Mary. 3. In Matthew, the apparition is seen in a dream ; in Luke, 
while awake. 4. There is a disagreement with respect to the time at which the 
apparition took place. 5. Both, the purpose of the apparition and the effect, sre 



THEIR HISTORIC VERITY. 201 

"Life of Jesus," he conceives himself at liberty to 
discard facts recorded by one Evangelist only, on the 
mere ground of silence on the part of the others. 
Whatever an Evangelist does not record, he is argued 
not to have known ; and his want of knowledge is 
taken as a proof that the event could not have hap- 
pened. The sophistry of such an argument is appar- 
ent. "Who will deny that eye-witnesses of one and 
the same event notice a different portion of the at- 
tendant circumstances, and that, moreover, those who 
record an event which they have witnessed, omit 
ordinarily, by far the greater portion of the attendant 
circumstances, though they have noticed them at the 

different." In this way five discrepancies are created out of the single fact that 
Matthew does not relate the Annunciation to the Virgin, while Luke gives no 
account of the angelic appearance to Joseph. Similarly, in the section where the 
calling of the first apostles is examined, discrepancies are seen between the fourth 
and the first two Evangelists, in the following respects : " 1. James is absent, 
according to John's Gospel, and, instead of his vocation, we have that of Philip 
and Nathanael. 2. In Matthew and Mark, the scene is the coast of the Galilean 
Sea ; in John, it is the vicinity of the Jordan. 3. In each representation there are 
two pairs of brothers ; but, in the one, they are Andrew and Peter, James and 
John ; in the other, Andrew and Peter, Philip and Nathanael. And, 4. In Mat- 
thew and Mark, all are called by Jesus ; in John, Philip only, the others being 
directed to him by the Baptist." Here, again, we have four discrepancies made 
out of the circumstance, that the first two Evangelists relate only the actual call 
of certain disciples, while John informs us what previous acquaintance they had 
of Jesus. So, from the mere silence of Matthew, Strauss concludes, positively, 
that he opposes Luke, in not considering Nazareth, but Bethlehem, to have been 
the original residence of our Lord's parents ; from the omission, by the three ear- 
lier writers, of the journeys into Judea, during our Lord's ministry, he pro- 
nounces that they contradict John, who speaks of such journeys ; he finds a dis- 
crepancy between this Evangelist's account of the relations between the Baptist 
and our Lord, and the account of the others, since he gives, and they do not 
give, the testimony borne by the former to our Lord's character ; he concludes, 
from Luke's not saying that John the Baptist was in prison when he sent his two 
disciples to our Lord, that he considered him as not yet cast into prison ; he finds 
Luke's and Matthew's accounts of the death of Judas "irreconcilable," because 
Luke says nothing of remorse, or of suicide, but relates what has the appearance 
of a death by accident ; he regards the presence of Nicodemus at our Lord's in- 
terment, as a "fabrication of the fourth Evangelist," simply because it is unno- 
ticed by the others ; he concludes, from their silence as to the raising of Lazarus, 
that " it can not have been known to them," and, therefore, that it can not be 
true; and, in other instances, too numerous to mention, he makes similar use 
of the mere f act of omission. 



202 THE GOSPEL RECORDS: 

time ! Strauss's cavils could only have been pre- 
cluded by the mere repetition, on the part of each 
Evangelist, of the exact circumstances mentioned by 
every other — a repetition which would have been 
considered to mark collusion, and which would thus 
have destroyed their value as distinct and independ- 
ent witnesses. The deviations, therefore, with regard 
to particular circumstances attending an event, are so 
far from lessening the credibility of the Gospel his- 
tory, that they rather increase it. They are devia- 
tions, such as are most sure to appear, wherever there 
is the highest degree of harmlessness, the calmest 
consciousness of entire truthfulness, and an entire 
absence of collusion. And, suppose we should have to 
acknowledge the existence of a deviation, for which — 
from a want of a full knowledge of all the attending 
circumstances — we could not offer a satisfactory ex- 
planation ; as, for instance, with regard to the cure 
of the blind at Jericho, (Matt, xx, 29, 34; Mark x, 
46, 52; Luke xviii, 35, 19) — such a concession would 
still leave the credibility of the Gospel history un- 
touched. It would only conflict with the verbal inspi- 
ration of the Evangelists, but they would remain his- 
torical authorities of the first order, witnesses as fully 
to be trusted for the circumstances of our Lord's life, 
as Xenophon for the sayings and doings of Socrates. 
Even Lessing, that severe critic, while he pointed out 
apparent discrepancies in the accounts of Christ's 
resurrection, did not feel himself justified to reject 
the fact itself on the ground of these discrepancies. 
" Who," he says, " has ever drawn such an inference 
in profane history ? If Livy, Polybius, and Tacitus 
record the same event, but with such a difference, as 
regards the attending circumstances, that the details 



THEIR HISTORIC VERITY. 203 

of the one seem irreconcilable to that of the other, is, 
therefore, the event itself put in question ? Now, if 
we deal so trustfully with profane writers, why should 
we torture the Evangelists for every syllable?" To 
which Tholuck adds : " It will not be easy to find, 
two historians in classic antiquity, who, though equally 
trustworthy, do not differ from, or even contradict, 
each other, when they relate the same event, be it 
from the imperfections of man's faculties of observ- 
ation and description, or because the writers could 
not anticipate our circumstances and meet our wants. 
How insoluble are often the difficulties which arise 
from the conflicting testimonies of trustworthy wit- 
nesses at court ! He that would make shipwreck of 
faith on account of some few insignificant discrepan- 
cies in the Gospel narratives, would be no greater 
loss to the Church than he would be a gain, who is 
induced to embrace the faith of the Gospel by no 
weightier argument, than the proof that the Evan- 
gelists stated alike every particular of each event, 
and wrote down the words of our Lord verbatim and 
literatim, like stenographers." 

2. By far the greatest number of the so-called dis- 
crepancies in the Gospels are of a chronological 
character, and some of them — as, for instance, the 
journey of Jesus into the country of the Gadarenes, 
which, according to Matthew, was preceded by a num- 
ber of events that followed it according to Mark and 
Luke — might, indeed, be called contradictory, if it 
could be shown that any of the Evangelists designed 
to furnish us with a complete, consecutive account of 
the ministry of Christ. The very contrary of this 
assumption is an undeniable fact. They evidently do 
not intend, or pretend, to give us more than a selec- 



204 THE GOSPEL RECORDS: 

tion from the rich materials of the life and labors of 
their Master. All that the Synoptists report of the 
earlier half of his ministry is confined to a few frag- 
ments. From Matt, xi, 21, it appears that Christ 
had endeavored by mighty works to call Chorazin 
to repentance; but neither Matthew nor the other 
Evangelists say any thing of the works of Christ 
performed there. It has, however, been contended, 
that Luke, in the preface to his Gospel, does claim to 
give a history of Christ in chronological order. But 
this is not so. Compared with the sketches, which 
some Christians had made in an unauthorized man- 
ner, Luke could very properly call his work "per- 
fect" and "in order," even though he did not pursue 
the life of Christ from day to day, and week to week, 
but gave what appeared to him most important, in 
some systematic order. Each of the Evangelists had 
a plan of his own, according to which he arranged 
and grouped the events, and, therefore, the sequence — 
called akolouthia — of the events and sermons differs 
in each of the Synoptists. But if this difference in 
the selection and arrangement of the material in 
each of the Synoptists has its ground in the special 
plan which each followed, it is evident that this va- 
riety implies no incongruity or disharmony. The 
question, whether and how the chronological order 
of the events, recorded by the Evangelists, can be 
established, belongs to the subject of the Harmony 
of the Gospels, which we shall treat in Part V. It 
is sufficient to remark here, with regard to such say- 
ings and discourses of the Lord as are placed by the 
Evangelists in connection with different occasions, 
that we are fully justified to assume, that similar 
sayings and discourses were delivered by our Savior 



THEIR HISTORIC VERITY. 205 

more than once, at different times and under differ- 
ent circumstances, as appears, for instance, clearly 
from those denunciations of the scribes and Phari- 
sees which were first uttered by our Lord on his 
journey to Jerusalem, (Luke xi, 37,) afterward sol- 
emnly repeated in the Temple at the close of his 
public ministry. (Matt, xxiii.) 

§ 22. The Assumption that Miracles are Impossible and 
Unsusceptible of Proof. 

While German rationalism has vainly tried to dis- 
prove the verity of the miracles recorded in the 
Gospels, that is, to explain away the miraculous na- 
ture of these occurrences by means of an interpreta- 
tion, admitted now on all hands to be entirely unau- 
thorized and absurd — pantheistic and atheistic phi- 
losophy denies the miracles on the plea of their 
impossibility. This stupendous assumption is the ba- 
sis upon which the criticism of Strauss, in his "Life 
of Jesus," rests. Miracles are to be declared impos- 
sible, and, therefore, a narrative of which supernatu- 
ral occurrences form an essential part, is, just so far, 
said to be devoid of historic character. The thesis 
that miracles are impossible, implies, of course, that 
the word "miracle" is not used in the sense of the 
Latin "mirabile" meaning something wonderful aris- 
ing from natural- causes not known at the time of its 
taking place, or yet unknown. With this is conceded 
the proper definition of a miracle. It is a Divine in- 
terposition to accomplish, by special agency, an ef- 
fect not to be reached in the natural course and order 
of events. But the denial of the possibility of such 
an interposition — from whatever stand-point the argu- 
ment is attempted, whether with reference to phil- 



206 THE GOSPEL RECORDS : 

osophical conceptions of God's nature and attributes, 
or with reference to experience and the empirical 
laws of Nature, which are said to preclude the possi- 
bility of a sufficient evidence of the miracle — can be 
shown to be a mere begging of the question. Let 
us examine this axiom of modern infidelity in its 
chameleon-like phases, which all may be summed up 
under two general heads. 

I. Spinoza, the father of modern pantheism, to 
whom God and nature are one, says in substance : 
" A miracle is inconsistent with the perfections of the 
Deity, for it is conceivable only upon the supposition 
that the self-manifestation of God in nature proved 
defective, but such a supposition would be irrecon- 
cilable with a belief in God's perfection." In this 
syllogism Spinoza takes for granted : 1. That there 
is in the universe no self-conscious, personal Intelli- 
gence, independent of matter, for he defines a mira- 
cle, at another place, "as something which we can 
not explain by a natural law, but which has always 
a natural cause," admitting evidently of no other 
Divinity than what nature manifests. Matter is to him 
the only image of his God. 2. That the world is still 
in its original, normal state, its harmony not having 
been disturbed by sin, the act of free moral agents, 
and that, therefore, there is no need of a Divine in- 
terposition for moral purposes, that is, for the sake 
of the moral beings in the physical universe. On 
the contrary, it is assumed, that the universe is gov- 
erned only by physical laws, not by moral laws, and 
that a miracle would be an alteration of the estab- 
lished machinery of nature. 3. That, because nature 
is an expression of God's will, there can be no other 
expression. It is assumed that, because God acts 



THEIR HISTORIC VERITY. 207 

after a particular mode in certain circumstances, he 
can never have reasons for acting after a different 
manner in other circumstances. It is assumed that 
an addition is an inconsistency, that to superinduce 
any thing further upon something previously exist- 
ing is to declare that which thus existed to have 
been wrong or bad. It is evident that, unless these 
premises can be proved, the pantheistic argument 
against miracles falls to the ground. " The simple 
question," says Dr. J. Haven, in an article on mira- 
cles, (Bibl. Sacra, 1862,) " is this : Is there a Deity at 
all? Or is all power to be resolved into this great 
system of universal, inevitable, eternal law — this grand 
machinery of l eternally-impressed consequences,' that 
goes grinding and clanking on from eternity to 
eternity? If the latter, then we grant that miracles 
are out of question. But if there be a God, as some 
of us in our simplicity have supposed; if we may 
crave the indulgence of this highly-cultivated age so 
far as to be permitted to retain the antiquated notion 
of a Deity at the head of affairs ; and if we place 
this Deity where he belongs, behind all those laws, 
and above them all, as their source and spring, then 
why may not the power that usually works in and 
by such and such methods or laws, if occasion re- 
quires, act in some other way, without or above 
those laws? Nay, why may he not, if necessary to 
the accomplishment of his purposes, even reverse, or 
wholly set aside for the time, those usual methods 
of procedure which we call laws of nature?" We 
call an event natural, when it is produced by natural 
means or agencies. But God, who created these 
agencies and set them in operation, is himself super- 
natural, and when he operates in nature otherwise 



208 THE GOSPEL RECORDS: 

than through those so-called natural causes, we call 
the work supernatural. The work of creation is su- 
pernatural; it is a work in nature, proceeding from 
a power above nature. The raising of the dead 
would be supernatural, for there is no physical or 
physiological law capable of producing such a result. 
To contend that every event or phenomenon must 
be referred as an effect to a physical law, is simply 
to deny both the existence of a Supreme Intelli- 
gence as the original cause or creator, and that of 
the power of self-determination of the human will, 
either of which being denied, neither the possibility 
of miracles nor any other question of relation or 
morality is worth speaking about. " Admit, on the 
other hand, the existence of a free will in man, and 
we have the experience of a power analogous, how- 
ever inferior, to that which is supposed to operate in 
the production of a miracle, and forming the basis of 
a legitimate argument from the less to the greater — 
as Twesten shows in his ^SSorlefimgen fiber bie ®og- 
trtattf/ In the will of man we have the solitary in- 
stance of an efficient cause, in the highest sense of 
the term, acting among and along with the physical 
causes of the material world, and producing results 
which would not have been brought about by any 
invariable sequence of physical causes left to their 
own action. We have evidence also of an elasticity ', 
so to speak, in the constitution of nature, which per- 
mits the influence of human powers on the phenom- 
ena of the world to be exercised or superseded at 
will, without affecting the stability of the whole. 
We have thus a precedent for allowing the possibil- 
ity of a similar interference by a higher will on a 
grander scale, provided for by a similar elasticity of 



THEIR HISTORIC VERITY. 209 

the matter subjected to its influence. Such inter- 
ferences, whether produced by human or by super- 
human will, are not contrary to the laws of matter; 
but neither are they the result of those laws. They 
are the work of an agent who is independent of the 
laws, and who, therefore, neither obeys them nor 
disobeys them. (See Oxotfie in Stubtcn unb Rtitifett, 
1858, p. 33.) If a man, of his own free will, throws 
a stone into the air, the motion of the stone, as soon 
as it has left his hand, is indeed determined by a 
combination of purely-material laws. But by what 
law came it to be thrown at all? What law brought 
about the circumstances through which the aforesaid 
combination of material laws came into operation on 
this particular occasion and in this particular man- 
ner? The law of gravitation, no doubt, remains con- 
stant and unbroken, whether the stone is lying on 
the ground or moving through the air ; but neither 
the law of gravitation nor all the laws of matter 
put together could have brought about this partic- 
ular result, without the interposition of the free will 
of the man who throws the stone. Substitute the will 
of God for the will of man ; and the argument, which 
in the above instance is limited to the narrow sphere 
within which man's powers can be exercised, becomes 
applicable to the whole extent of creation and to all 
the phenomena which it embraces." (Mansell on 
Miracles, p. 28.) As this argument ought to be ap- 
prehended with the utmost clearness, we will give it 
as stated by another late English writer, Dr. Heurt- 
ley, in his refutation of Baden Powell : " The human 
will is the element, the action of whose disturbing 
force upon the material system around us comes 

most frequently or most strikingly under our notice. 

18 



210 THE GOSPEL RECORDS: 

Man j in the exercise of his ordinary faculties, is per 
petually interfering with, or molding, or controlling 
the operation of those ordinary laws of matter whicn 
are in exercise around him. He does so, if he does 
but disturb one pebble in a state of rest, or stay tne 
fall of another before it reaches the ground. He 
does so to a vastly-greater extent when, by means of 
the appliances with which art, instructed by science, 
has furnished him, he projects a ball to the distance 
of four or five miles, or constrains steam, or light, or 
electricity, or chloroform to do his bidding. Still his 
doings are not miracles, because they do not extend 
beyond the range of his unassisted powers. But 
what is there in the reason of things to make it in- 
credible or even improbable, that God, on special oc- 
casions, and for special ends, may have endowed some 
men with superhuman powers, Tby which the laws of 
the material world may be controlled to an extent 
beyond what could have been done by unassisted na- 
ture? or that he may have directed or permitted be- 
ings superior in might to man to exercise such pow- 
ers ? That he has done so Scripture affirms. To say 
that it is contrary to experience is to beg the w T hole 
question at issue. The fact is, once admit that there 
is a God, and that he may, for special reasons, endow 
man with higher powers, and you grant that there 
are agents who have it in their power to interfere 
with or control the laws ordinarily in operation 
in the material world, so as to work miracles. Ad- 
mit, further, that there may be an occasion calling 
for superhuman interference — and such surely is 
the authentication of a revelation containing truths 
which it was of the utmost consequence for man to 
know, but of which, except by revelation, he could 



THEIR HISTORIC VERITY. 211 

know nothing — and the possibility is advanced to the 
highest probability." 

AYe have shown, then, that "a miracle is not a viola- 
tion of the laws of nature, in any sense in which such 
a violation is impossible or inconceivable. It is sim- 
ply the introduction of a new agent, possessing new 
powers, and therefore not included under the rules 
generalized from a previous experience. Its miracu- 
lous character, distinguishing it from mere new dis- 
coveries in nature, consists in the fact that the pow- 
ers in question are supposed to be introduced for a 
special purpose, and to be withdrawn again when 
that purpose is accomplished, and thus to be excluded 
from the field of future observation and investigation. 
But the supposition of such powers needs not imply 
any violation of the present laws observed by present 
natural agents. The laws of nature are simply gen- 
eral statements concerning the powers and properties 
of certain classes of objects which have come under 
our observation. They say nothing about the powers 
and properties of other objects or classes of objects 
which have not been observed, or which have been 
observed with a different result. There are laws, for 
instance, of one class of material agents which do not 
apply to another ; and there are laws of matter in 
general which are not applicable to mind ; and so 
there may be other orders of beings of which we 
have no knowledge, the laws of whose action may be 
different from all that we know of mind or body. A 
violation, in the proper sense of the word, of the laics 
of nature icould only take place, if, in two cases in which 
the cause or antecedent fact were exactly the same, the 
effect or consequent fact were different. But no such 
irregularity is asserted by the believer in miracles. 



212 THE GOSPEL RECORDS: 

He does not assert that miracles are produced by the 
abnormal action of natural and known causes— on 
the contrary, he expressly maintains that they are 
produced by a special interposition of Divine power; 
and that such an interposition, constituting in itself 
a different cause, may reasonably be expected to be 
followed by a different effect. So far, then, as a 
miracle is regarded as the operation of a special 
cause producing a special effect, it offers no antago- 
nism to that general uniformity of nature, according 
to which the same effects will always follow from the 
same causes. The opposition between science and 
miracle, if any exist, must be sought in another 
quarter; namely, in the assumption that the intro- 
duction of a special cause is itself incredible. The 
ground of such an assumption appears to lie in the 
hypothesis that the existing forces of nature are so 
mutually related to each other that no new power 
can be introduced without either disturbing the 
whole equilibrium of the universe, or involving a 
series of miracles, coextensive with the universe, to 
counteract such disturbance." (Mansel, pp. 24, 25.) 
To the last-named assumption it is sufficient to reply: 
1. If we admit the personality and, as implied in the 
personality, the moral nature of God, without which 
admission no religion, no feeling of a spiritual rela- 
tion between God and man, and no conception of a 
mind superior to nature can have any existence, we 
may doubtless believe that God from the beginning 
so ordered the constitution of the world as to leave 
room for the exercise of those miraculous powers 
which he foresaw would, at a certain time, be exer- 
cised ; just as he has left similar room for the ex- 
ercise, within narrower limits, of the human will. 



THEIR HISTORIC VERITY. 213 

2. That God should interpose in the uniformities 
which exist among natural phenomena, by introduc- 
ing a new (miraculous) power, is the less surprising, 
as he has permitted man, as a free moral agent, to 
act contrary to the design for which he was created, 
and thus, by sinning, to violate the originally-estab- 
lished order of nature, and the miraculous inter- 
position of God has really for its object to restore 
the order of things which has been disturbed by 
the fall. 

II. It is asserted that "even supposing a miracle 
were wrought, it would be impossible to establish 
the fact by evidence." On what grounds is this as- 
sertion made? Hume says: "A miracle is contrary 
to human experience, and, therefore, incredible." To 
state this argument is to refute it. Neither the major 
nor the minor premise is true. To assert that mira- 
cles are contrary to all human experience is an as- 
sumption which begs the whole question in dispute. 
That miracles are contrary to general experience is 
very true, else they would not be miracles. That 
they are contrary to all human experience is not 
true. So far from this, they have become actually 
the objects of human experience in connection with 
the promulgation both of the Jewish and, afterward, 
of the Christian systems of religion. The facts are 
well attested, the statements clear, full, explicit. The 
instances, though rare, yet, in the aggregate, are nu- 
merous. The witnesses are many, men of good char- 
acter and good sense. They testify to plain facts, 
about which there could well be no mistake. They 
appeal to their cotemporaries for the truth of their 
statements ; and that testimony goes uncontradicted, 
nay, is confirmed, by their enemies. Now, it is a 



214 THE GOSPEL RECORDS: 

sheer begging of the question for any man to assert 
that miracles are contrary to human experience, 
when so many witnesses testify positively to the oc- 
currences under their own observation of events, 
which, if they really did occur as stated, must be 
admitted to be miraculous. The fact that Mr. Hume, 
or any number of men, did not see a miracle, does 
not prove that nobody has ever seen one. Mere neg- 
ative testimony can not outweigh positive. Nor is 
the major premise of Mr. Hume's argument more 
tenable. An event is not necessarily incredible, be- 
cause not known to have occurred before. Is it quite 
certain that nothing can take place in the world 
which has not already taken place ? Even if it were 
conceded, then, as it is not, that miracles are con- 
trary to human experience, it by no means follows 
that they are, on that account, necessarily incredible. 
If in ten thousand millions of occurrences we have 
found nothing but natural occurrences — this will 
never entitle us, by any logical rule, to declare that 
in no other occurrence can there be supernatural 
agency. 

Again, it is said: "You can not prove a miracle, 
as it is beyond the capacity of a man to tell what 
powers are in nature. You may show us a phenom- 
enon inexplicable in our present state of knowledge, 
but this does not prove it to be beyond agencies of 
nature as yet undiscovered by man." It is sufficient 
to reply to this, that, though we do not know the 
full extent of the powers of nature, there are some 
things — -just such things as the works actually re* 
corded as having been done by Christ and his apos- 
tles — of which we are quite certain that they are not 
within the range of natural agency. Moreover, " in 



THEIR HISTORIC VERITY. 215 

proportion as the science of to-day surpasses that of 
former generations, so is the improbability that any 
man could have wrought in past times, by natural 
means, works which no skill of the present age is 
able to imitate. The effect, therefore, of scientific 
progress, as regards Scriptural miracles, is gradually 
to eliminate the hypothesis which refers them to un- 
known natural causes, and to reduce the question to 
the following alternative : Either the recorded acts 
were not performed at all, or they were performed, 
as their authors themselves declare, by virtue of a 
supernatural power consciously exercised for that 
very purpose. The theory which attempts to explain 
them as distorted statements of events reducible to 
known natural causes, has been tried by the rationalists 
of Germany, and has failed so utterly as to preclude 
all expectation of its revival, even in the land of its 
birth. There remains only the choice between ac- 
cepting the sacred narrative as a true account of 
miracles actually performed, and rejecting it as 
wholly fictitious and incredible ; whether the fiction 
be attributed to the gradual accretion of mythical 
elements, or — for a later criticism has come back 
again to the older and more intelligible theory — to 
the conscious fabrication of a willful impostor." 
(Hansel, pp. 22, 23.) Again, it is said by Strauss, and 
repeated by a writer in the late "Essays and Ee- 
views:" "No testimony can reach to the supernat- 
ural; testimony can apply only to apparent, sensible 
facts ; testimony can only prove an extraordinary and 
perhaps inexplicable occurrence or phenomenon : that 
it is due to supernatural causes is entirely dependent 
on the previous belief and assumptions of the parties.'' 
To this Mansel (pp. 14, 15) makes the pertinent and 



216 THE GOSPEL RECORDS: 

weighty reply: "It may, with certain exceptions, be 
applicable to a case in which the assertion of a super- 
natural cause rests solely on the testimony of the 
spectator of the fact; but it is not applicable to those 
in which the cause is declared by the performer. Let 
us accept, if we please, merely as a narrative of ' ap- 
parent, sensible facts,' the history of the cure of the 
blind and dumb demoniac, or of the lame man at the 
Beautiful Gate; but we can not place the same re- 
striction upon the words of our Lord, and of Peter, 
which expressly assign the supernatural cause: 'If I 
cast out devils by the Spirit of God, then the king- 
dom of God is come unto you,' (Matt, xii, 28,) and, 
1 By the name of Jesus Christ of Nazareth doth this 
man stand here before you whole,' (Acts iv, 10.) We 
have here, at least, a testimony reaching to the su- 
pernatural; and if that testimony be admitted in 
these cases, it may be extended to the whole series 
of wonderful works performed by the same persons. 
For if a given cause can be assigned as the true ex- 
planation of any single occurrence of the series, it 
becomes at once the most reasonable and probable 
explanation of the remainder. . . . One miracle 
is enough to show that the series of events with 
which it is connected is one which the Almighty has 
seen fit to mark by exceptions to the ordinary course 
of his providence; and, if this be once granted, we 
have no a priori grounds on which we can determine 
how many of such exceptions are to be expected. 
If a single miracle recorded in the Gospels be once 
admitted, the remainder cease to have any special 
antecedent improbability, and may be established by 
the same evidence, which is sufficient for ordinary 
events." Again, we are told: "In nature, and from 



THEIR HISTORIC VERITY. 217 

nature, by science and by reason, we neither have, 
nor can possibly have, any evidence of a Deity work- 
ing miracles ; for that we must go out of nature and 
beyond reason. If we could have any such evidence 
from nature , it could only prove extraordinary natural 
effects, which would not be miracles in the old theo- 
logical sense, as isolated, unrelated, and uncaused; 
whereas, no physical fact can be conceived as unique, 
or without analogy and relation to others, and to the 
whole svstem of natural causes." To this Dr. J. 
Haven, quoted above, replies : " True, that which is 
from nature, that is, produced by natural causes, can 
not be supernatural ; but it is not true that in nature, 
that is, within the limits and domain of nature, there 
can be no occurrence of the supernatural. Nor is it 
true that whatever is beyond the power of natural 
causes to produce is, therefore, beyond the domain 
of reason to investigate, and must be received, if at 
all, only by a blind and unquestioning faith. That 
is not for a moment to be conceded. That which is 
extra-natural is not of necessity incapable of proof. 
The question whether a dead man was, on a certain 
occasion, restored to life, is a question to be settled 
wholly by evidence and investigation of reason. If 
the event did occur, clearly it was supernatural ; the 
laws and forces of nature are not adequate to produce 
such a result. But did it occur? That is the real 
question ; and it is a question which falls as clearly 
and fully within the range of rational investigation, 
and the laws of evidence, as any question in physical 
science." One word more with reference to a phrase 
which Strauss and a writer in the " Essays and Ee- 
views " use in place of an argument, "that miracles 

are inconceivable by reason." This phrase can cer- 

19 



218 THE GOSPEL RECORDS : 

tainly not mean that we can not have an idea of a 
miracle, for we can easily form the idea or notion of 
an event in nature — for instance, of a person rising 
from the dead, with a cause beyond nature. Those 
who use it no doubt mean by it, that a miracle is 
contrary to intuitive reason, that is, to a fundamental 
law or constitutional principle of the mind ; such, for 
instance, as the law of causation. If this were the 
case, we grant that it would be impossible to estab- 
lish a miracle. But what constitutional law of the 
mind is contradicted by a miracle? None has been 
named. It is certainly not the law of causation ; for 
a supernatural event is not declared to be an effect 
without a cause ; it is merely an effect not resulting 
from the agencies working in that system which we 
call nature. The principle of cause and effect must 
not be confounded with the principle of the uniform- 
ity of nature. While the former is universal, the 
latter is only partial; it declares, for instance, that 
fire left to itself will burn, but it does not say that 
fire may not be counteracted by a higher and Divine 
agency. Upon a disregarding of this distinction 
rests the assertion that a miracle is contrary to ex- 
perience. Inductive philosophy has shown that there 
is a set of agencies working in nature, and that there 
is uniformity in their operations. All this is freely 
granted; but when it is said that there can be noth- 
ing else, we demand the proof that every occurrence 
must have a physical or mundane cause. To this 
demand infidelity has never given a response. 

We have now met the assumption of the impossi- 
bility of miracles in all its various phases. The 
verity of the miracles recorded in the Gospel history 
rests upon the credibility of the Evangelists, and 



THEIR HISTORIC VERITY. 219 

upon the divine seal which the subject of their nar- 
rative, Jesus Christ, stamps upon the whole Gospel 
history. 

£ 23. The Alleged Lack of Sufficient Testimony by Pro- 
fane Writers. 

The verification by profane writers of the many 
incidental allusions to the civil history of the times, 
which the writings of the Evangelists furnish, has 
been set forth in § 16. In § 18 of the same chap- 
ter we have seen that the existence, at this time, 
of one called by his followers Christ, the place of 
his teaching, his execution by Pontius Pilate, Pro- 
curator of Judea under Tiberius, the rapid spread of 
his doctrine through the Roman world, the vast num- 
ber of converts made in a short time, the persecu- 
tions which they underwent, the innocency of their 
lives, their worship of Christ as God, are witnessed 
to by heathen writers of eminence, and would be cer- 
tain and indisputable facts, had the New Testament 
never been written. To expect from profane sources 
a testimony concerning the supernatural facts re- 
corded by the Evangelists would be absurd, since 
those who believed them naturally and almost neces- 
sarily became Christians. 

It has, however, been urged that, assuming the 
historical truth of the New Testament narrative, we 
might have expected far more frequent and fuller 
notices of the Christian religion and its Founder 
than the remains of antiquity furnish. It has, for 
instance, been said that Joscphus ought to have said 
more of Christ; and Seneca, the brother of Gallio, 
the observant Pausanias, the voluminous Plutarch, 
the copious Dio, the exact Arian, should have made 



y 



220 THE GOSPEL RECORDS: 

frequent mention of Christianity in their writings, 
instead of almost wholly ignoring it. To this ob- 
jection Mr. Eawlinson makes the following reply: 

"Let it be considered, in the first place, whether 
the very silence of these writers is not a proof of the 
importance which in their hearts they assigned to 
Christianity, and the difficulty which they felt in 
dealing with it — whether, in fact, it is not a forced 
and studied reticence — a reticence so far from being- 
indicative of ignorance that it implies only too much 
knowledge, having its origin in a feeling that it was 
best to ignore what it was unpleasant to confess and 
impossible to meet satisfactorily. Pausanias must 
certainly have been aware that the shrines of his be- 
loved gods were in many places deserted, and that 
their temples were falling into decay, owing to the 
conversion of the mass of the people to the new re- 
ligion ; we may be sure he inwardly mourned over 
this sad spirit of disaffection — this madness, as he 
must have thought it, of a degenerate age; but no 
word is suffered to escape him on the painful subject; 
he is too jealous of his gods' honor to allow that 
there are any who dare to insult them. Like the 
faithful retainer of a fallen house, he covers up the 
shame of his masters, and bears his head so much 
the more proudly, because of their depressed condi- 
tion. Again, it is impossible that Epictetus could 
have been ignorant of the wonderful patience and 
constancy of the Christian martyrs, of their marked 
contempt of death, and general indifference to worldly 
things ; he must, one would think, as a Stoic, have 
been moved with a secret admiration of those great 
models of fortitude, and if he had allowed himself to 
speak freely, could not but have made frequent ref- 



THEIR HISTORIC VERITY. 221 

erence to them. The one contemptuous notice, which 
is all that Arian reports, sufficiently indicates his 
knowledge; the entire silence, except in this passage, 
upon what it so nearly concerned a Stoical philoso- 
pher to bring forward, can only bo viewed as the 
studied avoidance of a topic which would have been 
unpalatable to his hearers, and to himself perhaps 
not wholly agreeable. The philosopher who regarded 
himself as raised by study and reflection to an 
exalted hight above the level of ordinary human- 
ity, would not be altogether pleased to find that his 
elevation was attained through the power of re- 
ligion, which he looked on as mere fanaticism. Thus, 
from different motives — from j^ride, from policy, from 
fear of offending the chief of the State, from real at- 
tachment to the old heathenism, and tenderness for 
it — the heathen writers who witnessed the birth and 
growth of Christianity united in a reticence which 
causes their notices of the religion to be a very in- 
sufficient measure of the place which it really held 
in their thoughts and apprehensions. A large allow- 
ance is to be made for this studied silence in esti- 
mating the value of the actual testimonies to the 
truth of the ]STew Testament narrative adducible 
from heathen writers of the first and second centuries. 
"And the silence of Josephus is, more plainly still, 
willful and affected. It is quite impossible that the 
Jewish historian should have been ignorant of the 
events which had drawn the eyes of so many to 
Judea but a few years before his own birth, and 
which a large and increasing sect believed to possess 
a supernatural character. Jesus of Nazareth was, 
humanly speaking, at least as considerable a person- 
age as John the Baptist, and the circumstances of his 



222 THE GOSPEL RECORDS: 

life and death must have attracted at least as much 
attention. There was no good reason why Josephus, 
if he had been an honest historian, should have men- 
tioned the latter and omitted the former. He had 
grown to manhood during the time that Christianity 
was being spread over the world; he had probably 
witnessed the tumults excited against Paul by his 
enemies at Jerusalem (Acts xxi, 27, etc.; xxii, 22, 23; 
xxiii, 10;) he knew of the irregular proceedings 
against 'James, the Lord's brother,' (Gal. i, 9;) he 
must have been well acquainted with the persecu- 
tions which the Christians had undergone at the 
hands of both Jews and heathen ; at any rate he 
could not fail to be at least as well informed as Tac- 
itus on the subject of transactions of which his own 
country had been the scene, and which had fallen 
partly within his own lifetime. When, therefore, we 
find that he is almost entirely silent concerning the 
Christian religion, and, if he mentions Christ at all, 
mentions him only incidentally in a single passage, 
as, 'Jesus, who was called Christ;' when we find this, 
we can not but conclude that, for some reason or 
other, the Jewish historian practices an intentional 
reserve, and will not enter upon a subject which ex- 
cites his fears or offends his prejudices. No conclu- 
sions inimical to the historic accuracy of the New 
Testament can reasonably be drawn from the silence 
of a writer who determinedly avoids the subject. 

"Further, in estimating the value of that direct 
evidence of adversaries to the main facts of Chris- 
tianity which remains to us, we must not overlook 
the probability that much evidence of this kind has 
perished. The books of the early opponents of 
Christianity, which might have been of the greatest 



THEIR HISTORIC VERITY. 223 

use to us for the confirmation of the Gospel history, 
were, with an unwise zeal, destroyed by the first 
Christian Emperors. Other testimony of the greatest 
importance has perished by the ravages of time. It 
seems certain that Pilate remitted to Tiberius an ac- 
count of the execution of our Lord, and the grounds 
of it; and that this document, to which Justin Mar- 
tyr more than once alludes, was deposited in the 
archives of the empire. The 'Acts of Pilate,' as they 
were called, seem to have contained an account, not 
only of the circumstances of the crucifixion, and the 
grounds upon which the Boman Governor regarded 
himself as justified in passing sentence of death upon 
the accused, but also of the miracles of Christ." 
Dr. Kurtz remarks, in his Church History : 
"Among the genuine non-Biblical testimonies about 
Christ, probably the most ancient is a Syriac letter 
of Mara, addressed to his son Serapion, written about 
the year 73. Mara, a man thoroughly versed in 
Greek philosophy, but not satisfied with the consola- 
tions it offered, writes from his place of exile a letter 
of comfort and instruction to his son, in which he 
ranks Christ along with Socrates and Pythagoras; 
he honors him as a wise king; he charges the Jews 
w^ith his murder, declares that thereby they had 
brought upon themselves the destruction of their 
commonwealth, but that Christ continued to live in 
the new law which he had given." 



224 THE GOSPEL RECORDS 



CHAPTER II. 

THE CREDIBILITY OF THE EVANGELISTS* 

§ 24. The Evangelists were in a Condition to inform them- 
selves ACCURATELY AND THOROUGHLY CONCERNING 

the Things which they Record. 

Two of them were the chosen and almost constant 
companions of the wonderful person whose life they 
describe; they listened to his public discourses, they 
enjoyed his familiar intercourse and private instruc- 
tion, they were eye-witnesses of his miracles, and 
consequently received them on the testimony of their 
own senses. Certainly no other biographer ever en- 
joyed such opportunities of informing himself thor- 
oughly concerning the subject of his narrative. Even 
cotemporary historians rarely see the facts which 

* The argument to be presented in this chapter has been stated at large in all 
the English works on the " Evidences of Christianity." "We follow substan- 
tially Home's Introduction, deviating, however, from tbat author in the order 
of tbe argumentation, and basing the personal credibility of the Evangelists 
upon the preceding proofs of the authenticity of the writings ascribed to them. 
If the Gospel Records have been written by the persons whose names they bear, 
it can not be denied that they were written by men who were possessed of a full 
knowledge of all they relate, and who had no conceivable motive to deviate 
from the truth. The credibility of a historian is established when there is 
sufficient evidence, 1. That he has had ample means of knowing the truth of 
the facts he relates, either by being himself an eye-witness, or by deriving his 
knowledge from an eye-witness; 2. That he is a man of sound mind, free from 
any mental bias to self-deception ; 3. That he is above the suspicion of having 
any motive or design to mislead his readers. Though historical works are 
generally accepted without a special inquiry into these criteria of credibility, 
being rejected only where there is positive proof that the historian is destitute 
either of the ability or of the willingness to report correctly, the Gospel history 
can challenge its being subjected to the severest tests of historical criticism. 



THEIR HISTORIC VERITY. 225 

they relate; they are often in a distant country from 
that in which the event happened, and are informed 
of it only by public reports, which are seldom faith- 
ful in all points. If it happens that an author be at 
the same time both historian and witness — that he has 
accompanied the general whose actions he relates, as, 
for instance, Polybius accompanied Scipio — that he 
has been his particular confident — we set a high 
value upon his memoirs, and should consider it an 
act of injustice to call them in question icithout solid 
proofs. If Plato has been deemed a competent wit- 
ness, and in every respect qualified to compose the 
biographical account of his master, Socrates, surely 
the Evangelists were equally-competent witnesses of 
the facts which they have related. 

It is true, two of them were not eye-witnesses; but 
they received their information from eye-witnesses, 
and their accounts agree in every essential point with 
those of the eye-witnesses; though it is evident, at the 
same time, that they did not know, or paid no regard 
to what others had before written on the same sub- 
ject. (See more on this subject, § 32.) 

§ 25. The Evangelists Exhibit in their Narratives no 
Symptom of Mental Derangement, which might 

HAVE MADE THEM VICTIMS OF SeLF- 

Delusion. 

To every candid reader of the Gospels the cer- 
tainty of the assertion made in the heading is self- 
evident, and a contrary supposition seems unworthy 
of an answer. Yet, as there are so many who con- 
demn the Gospels without having subjected them to 
a candid examination, we will show how unreasona- 



226 THE GOSPEL RECORDS : 

ble it is to suspect the Evangelists of being the vic- 
tims of self-delusion. In the first place, let it be 
borne in mind that their testimony did not relate to 
certain abstract doctrinal points, concerning which 
they might have erred through some mental defect. 
It respected facts concerning the reality of which 
they could not be misled. They became the disciples 
of Jesus Christ upon rational conviction, not upon 
internal persuasion alone, but on the irrefragable 
evidence of clear and stupendous miracles, proofs 
submitted to their senses, and approved by their 
reason — such proofs as enthusiasm could not have 
counterfeited, and never would have required ; and 
at every step of their progress, as their faith was 
called to signalize itself by new exertions, or to sus- 
tain new trials, it was fortified by new proofs. The 
slowness and caution with which the apostles re- 
ceived the fact of their Lord's resurrection from the 
dead fully exempt them from all suspicion of being 
the dupes of delusion and credulity. In the second 
place, the style of enthusiasts is always obscure, ar- 
rogant, and violent; the style of the Evangelists is 
the very reverse of this, plain, calm, and unexag- 
gerated, detailing the facts which establish the un- 
paralleled perfection of their divine Lord with the 
particularity and consistency of Truth. Moreover, 
they do that which enthusiasts never do ; they record 
their own mistakes, follies, and faults, and those of 
very serious magnitude, acknowledged to be such by 
themselves, and severely censured by their Master. 
Nor do we discover in the Gospels any effusion of 
passion and imagination, such as we find invariably 
in the writings of enthusiasts. 



THEIR HISTORIC VERITY. 227 

§ 26. The Evangelists can not be charged with haying had 

any Motive or Design to impose upon the World 

what, if it did not take place, they must 

have known to be false. 

No man of sense or candor ever dared to make 
such a charge. It is self-evident that, if the first dis- 
ciples of Jesus had any disposition to commit such a 
fraud, it would have been impossible for them to suc- 
ceed in it with their cotenrporaries ; and that, even 
if they could have done it, they would not have had 
a conceivable motive for it. No man will propagate 
a deliberate falsehood without having some advantage 
in view, either immediate or remote. Now, the first 
teachers of Christianity could have no prospect what- 
ever of any advantage. They could expect none from 
him in whom they professed to believe. Jesus Christ, 
indeed, had warned them to expect persecution, igno- 
miny, and death in this world, if they continued to 
be his disciples. They could not expect any honors 
or emoluments from the hands of the Jews and hea- 
thens, who persecuted them with unrelenting severity. 
They could not expect to acquire wealth, for their 
profession of the Christian faith subjected them to the 
loss of all things. Moreover, according to their own 
principles, either as Jews or Christians, they involved 
themselves in eternal misery if they made themselves 
guilty of propagating a deliberate falsehood. Again, 
how incredible that the sublimest precepts of piety 
and virtue should have been delivered by men of 
such abandoned principles, as they must have been, if 
they had really been impostors! How incredible that 
the first disciples should have been willing to die for 
the cause of Christ, who, if he had not risen again 



228 THE GOSPEL RECORDS: 

from the dead, would have miserably deceived them ! 
Lastly, if the apostles and Evangelists had designed 
to impose upon mankind, they would have accommo- 
dated themselves to the opinions and inclinations of 
the people whom they addressed; they would care- 
fully have avoided saying any thing that might offend 
them; but, instead of this, they did not spare the 
prejudices and corruptions of their cotemporaries. 

That the Evangelists were, on the contrary, men 
of the strictest integrity and sincerity is, as has been 
already remarked from another stand-point, manifest 
from the style and manner of their writings. There 
are no artful transitions or connections, no effort to 
set off a doubtful action and reconcile it to some 
other, or to the character of the person that did it. 
They do not dissemble certain circumstances in the 
life and sufferings of their Master which have no 
tendency to enhance his glory in the eyes of the 
world : such as the low circumstances of his parents, 
the mean accommodations of his birth — that, when 
he appeared publicly to the world, his townsmen and 
near relations despised and rejected him — that few 
among his followers were men conspicuous for wealth, 
dignity, or knowledge — that the rulers, the scribes 
and Pharisees disowned his pretensions and opposed 
him continually — that some, who for a time followed 
him, afterward deserted him — that he was betrayed 
into the hands of high -priests and rulers by one of 
those who had been selected for his constant com- 
panions. Impostors would certainly have acted dif- 
ferently. 

The same integrity and fidelity we find in what 
they record concerning themselves. They honestly 
acknowledge not only the lowness of their station, 



THEIR HISTORIC VERITY. 229 

but also the inveteracy of their national prejudices, 
the slowness of their apprehension, the weakness of 
their faith, the ambition of some of the disciples, the 
intolerant temper of others, and the worldly views 
of all. They even tell us of their cowardice in de- 
serting their Master when he was seized by his ene- 
mies ; and that, after his crucifixion, they had for a 
while given up their hopes in their Master, notwith- 
standing all the proof that had been exhibited, and 
the conviction which they had before entertained that 
he was the Messiah, and his religion was from God. 
They mention, with many affecting circumstances, 
the incredulity of one of their number, who was con- 
vinced of the reality of their Lord's resurrection only 
by ocular and sensible demonstration. They might 
have concealed their mental and moral deficiencies, 
or, at least, they might have alleged some reasons to 
extenuate them. But they did no such thing. They 
related, without disguise, events and facts just as 
they happened, and left them to speak for themselves. 
In short, it does not appear that it ever entered the 
minds of these writers to consider how this or the 
other action would appear to mankind, or what objec- 
tions might be raised against it. Greater marks of 
sincerity than those which the Evangelists bear it is 
impossible to find in any historical compositions that 
are extant; they convince their readers, in all they 
have written, that they published nothing to the 
world but what they believed themselves. When they 
relate any of the miracles of Jesus Christ, or the 
exercise of the miraculous powers with which they 
were endowed, they relate these astonishing facts, 
without any ornaments of language, in the most con- 
cise and simple manner; saying nothing previously 



230 THE GOSPEL RECORDS: 

to raise expectation, nor after the recital of them 
breaking out into exclamations, but they leave the 
reader to draw his own conclusion. When they nar- 
rate the resurrection and ascension of Christ they 
afford no explanation of any difficulties; they never 
offer a single argument to enforce their credit; they 
leave the bare facts with their readers, who may re- 
ceive or reject them. In perusing the simple and 
unadorned narratives of the Evangelists it is impos- 
sible not to feel that the purport of their writing was 
to bear witness of the truth. 

Finally, the same striking integrity characterizes 
the Evangelists when speaking of their enemies. Of 
all who were concerned in the persecution and death 
of Christ, they mention by name only the high-priest 
Caiaphas and his coadjutor Annas, the Eoman Pro- 
curator Pilate, and the treacherous disciple Judas. 
The suppression of their names would have impaired 
the evidence of their history to posterity; but not the 
slightest tincture of resentment is observable in the 
notice of these persons. The epithet attached to Judas 
by all the Evangelists — 8 napadobq, who delivered him 
up — is expressive of the simple fact rather than of its 
criminality, w^hich latter would more aptly be signi- 
fied by Ttpodorr^y traitor, as he is styled on one soli- 
tary occasion. 



THEIR HISTORIC VERITY. 231 



CHAPTER III. 

THE DIVINE SEAL STAMPED UPON THE GOSPEL HISTORY 
BY ITS SUBJECT, THE PERSON OF JESUS CHRIST. 

§ 27. The Verity of the Gospel History best accredited 
by the Personality of Jesus Christ. 

After having proved that the canonical Gospels 
were written in the apostolic age, and having found 
no testimony contrary to the consentient tradition of 
Christian antiquity in regard to their having been 
written by the persons whose names they bear, we 
placed them on no higher ground than other ancient 
productions. We have, thus far, considered them 
merely as human productions, and subjected them, as 
such, to the common laws of historical criticism. 
The result of this critical investigation has been, that 
we found them to bear the highest marks of human 
credibility — such as no other historical work of an- 
tiquity has. The assumption that miracles are im- 
possible, and that, therefore, credibility can not be 
claimed for a record of miracles, we have met by 
showing, on metaphysical grounds, that, and why, 
miracles are not impossible, and that, therefore, the 
miraculous elements of the Gospel history are not 
incompatible with its credibility. But we have now 
to go a step further, and produce the positive proofs 
of the historic verity of the miracles recorded in the 
Gospels. 

Instead of basing the truth of Gospel history and 
the Divinity of Christ upon the miracles recorded by 



232 THE GOSPEL RECORDS: 

the Evangelists, we may prove the historic verity of 
the miracles and the Divinity of Christ by the un- 
paralleled perfectness of the moral and intellectual 
character of the man Jesus of Nazareth, as he is pre- 
sented to us by the plain and honest fishermen 
of Galilee. " Demanding nothing more," says Mr. 
Young, in his Christ of History, " than the simple hu- 
manity of Jesus of Nazareth, we shall venture from 
this platform to assert and expound his true Divinity. 
Dismissing all preconceptions, however fondly cher- 
ished, and however long adopted into the faith of the 
Churches, assuming nothing which is not virtually 
and even formally admitted by enemies as well as 
friends, we hope to show that the manhood of Christ, 
as it appealed to the senses and the minds of the 
men of his own times, supplies and sustains the 
proof of his Godhood. Behold only the man Jesus — 
he shall indicate and demonstrate his union with ab- 
solute Godhead. Such a humanity as his is utterly 
inexplicable, except on the ground of true Divinity."* 

* Mr. Norton, though not admitting the perfect exhibition of moral excel- 
lence in the teachings and actions of Christ, as an intrinsic proof of his Divinity 
proper, nevertheless argues from it the truthfulness of the Gospel Records. His argu- 
ment is this : " The Gospels contain an exhibition of character incomparably 
more wonderful than is to be found in any other writings. It is the character 
of a messenger from God, assuming in his name the highest authority, con- 
stantly exercising supernatural powers, and appearing among men for the pur- 
pose of making them acquainted with God, with their own immortal nature, 
with their duty, and with those ennobling and awful sanctions by which it is 
enforced. He is represented as discovering to men a perfect system of religion. 
He always appears, whether teaching, or acting, or suffering, as displaying the 
highest excellence. His character is every-where consistent with itself and 
with the supernatural dignity of his office, though he is represented as passing 
through scenes the most trying and humiliating. We have, then, in these 
writings a just conception of a perfect system of religion, as taught by a Di- 
vine teacher, assuming the highest authority and exercising the most extra- 
ordinary powers, and displaying throughout a character in which we discover 
nothing but what is excellent and sublime. Now, the writers of the Gospels 
derived those conceptions which we find in their works either from reality or 
from their own imaginations. If it be contended that these writers did not 
draw from reality, but from imagination — the answer to this supposition is, 



THEIR HISTORIC VERITY. 233 

From this stand-point it is our object to show that 
the character and life of Jesus could not possibly 
have been the natural product of the times and coun- 
try in which the Gospel Records incontestably orig- 
inated — nor, indeed, of any other age or country; 
that the moral and intellectual perfectness of the 
character of Jesus, and the wonderful harmony and 
consistency of his doctrines and works, could not 
possibly have been conceived and delineated by the 
Evangelists, unless they had been actually witnessed 
by them ; that the moral and intellectual perfectness 
of Jesus imparts to the testimony he gives of him- 
self, as well as to the miracles which the Evangelists 
ascribe to him, a verity absolutely unassailable ; and, 
finally, that the unparalleled human perfection of 
Jesus — which by almost universal consent, even of 
unbelievers, rises far above every human greatness 
known before or since — can not be rationally ex- 
plained, except on the ground of such an essential 
union with the Godhead as he claimed himself, and 



that the conceptions of moral excellence and sublimity which we find dis- 
played and embodied in their writings would imply a transcendent genius and 
force of mind to which there is no parallel, which it is impossible should have 
existed in four anonymous, unknown authors, and which are irreconcilable 
with the actual want of extraordinary talents, and of skill in composition, that 
is discovered in their works. These conceptions likewise would imply a cor- 
rectness of moral principle, and a purity and sublimity of moral feeling, which 
could not exist in union with intentional falsehood. The argument, therefore, 
is briefly this, that the religion and morality of the Gospels, as exhibited in the 
doctrines, precepts, and life of Christ, are such as could not have been con- 
ceived and represented by the writers of the Gospels if they had not had a liv- 
ing archetype before them ; and that, without such an archetype, the power of 
conceiving and representing what we find in the Gospels, if it ever existed in 
any human being, would necessarily imply that that extraordinary being had a 
character which entitled him to perfect confidence. It was wholly out of the 
power of the writers of the Gospels to deceive us, as they must have done, sup- 
posing their representations false ; and the very existence of such a power, in 
any case, would in itself imply the absence of all will to deceive. The intrinsic 
character of these writings, therefore, affords positive evidence of their his- 
toric verity as to all essential facts." 

20 



234 THE GOSPEL RECORDS : 

as the Evangelists ascribed to him. Thus, as the eye 
of a traveler at the foot of a mountain may slowly 
travel up the majestic slope till it is lost in the 
clouds or dazzling glories of the summit, so the 
mind may contemplate Christ from his lowliest and 
most human traits, where he is one with the humblest 
human being, up beyond the highest reach and limit 
of humanity, "far above all principalities, and powers, 
and every name that is named," to that dazzling 
summit of glory where he is one with God. 

Prom whatever point of view we examine the hu- 
man character and earthly life of Jesus, whether we 
contemplate the circumstances, times, and country 
in which he lived, or his moral and intellectual 
grandeur, or the testimony he gives of his own per- 
son, or the nature of the miracles ascribed to him, 
we shall be compelled, by a strictly -historical process, 
to acknowledge the justness of the deductions named 
above. This new homage to the Savior was first paid 
by the modern Evangelical theology of Germany. 
Dr. C. Ullmann opened the way by his work on 
" The Sinlessness of Jesus an Evidence of Christianity" 
and, ever since the appearance of that classical work, 
greater prominence has been given by English, as 
well as German theologians, to the ethical element 
and human perfection of Christ. This branch of 
apologetical literature, in the English language, has 
been also enriched by Dr. John Young in his " Christ 
of History," by Dr. Horace Bushnell in his " Nature 
and the Supernatural," and by the theological tract 
of Dr. Schaff, entitled, u The Moral Character of 
Christ, or the Perfection of Christ's Humanity, a 
Proof of his Divinity." 



THEIR HISTORIC VERITY. 235 



§ 28. The admitted outer Conditions of the Life of Jesus — 
Leaving its Astounding Results, as ttell as the unlim- 
ited Scope of the Mind of Jesus and the Perfect 
Symmetry of his Character, utterly Inexpli- 
cable WITHOUT THE ADMISSION OF A SUPER- 
NATURAL and Divine Element. 

The most destructive criticism finds itself com- 
pelled to admit that Jesus of Nazareth is a historical 
personage, that he was a resident in the obscure vil- 
lage of Nazareth till about thirty years old, a carpen- 
ter's son, poor, unlearned, unbefriended, and that he 
was put to an ignominious death by the Jewish 
hierarchy a few years after he had appeared in 
public. 

It is utterly inconceivable that such circumstances 
and conditions would have been made by any Jewish 
writer the substratum of the miraculous life of the 
Messiah. And it is equally inconceivable that a 
mere man, under such circumstances and conditions, 
could have become the turning-point of the world's 
history, accomplishing what neither the wisdom of 
the wisest, nor the power of the mightiest, neither 
philosophers nor emperors could accomplish. This 
Mr. Young, the author of "The Christ of History," 
has set forth in a very minute and complete argu- 
mentation, of which we will give the main points : 
Ordinarily the early life and social position of a man 
are the true key to the proper understanding of his 
future character and career. To this rule the life of 
Jesus makes an unqualified exception. In his early 
training and position there is nothing that but dis- 
tantly accounts for his subsequent relation to the 
world. His life stands out a mysterious exception 



236 THE GOSPEL RECORDS: 

from all laws which generally govern the destiny of 
men; what he became and accomplished could not 
possibly be the natural development of earlier im- 
pressions received through favorable circumstances. 
He grew up among a people seldom and only con- 
temptuously named by the ancient classics, and sub- 
jected at the time to the yoke of a foreign oppressor; 
in a remote and conquered province of the Roman 
Empire; in the darkest district of Palestine; in a 
little country town of proverbial insignificance ; in 
poverty and manual labor, in the obscurity of a car- 
penter's shop ; without the help of literary culture, 
as is testified by the surprise of the Jews, who knew 
all his human relations and antecedents. " How 
knoweth this man letters," they asked, when they 
heard Jesus teach, "having never learned?" (John 
vii, 15.) This question is unavoidable and unanswer- 
able, if Christ be regarded as a mere man. For each 
effect presupposes a corresponding cause. The diffi- 
culty here presented can by no means be solved by 
a reference to the fact that many, perhaps the major- 
ity of great men, especially in the Church, have risen 
by their own industry and perseverance from the 
lower walks of life, and from a severe contest with 
poverty and obstacles of every kind. The fact itself 
is readily conceded; but in every one of these cases, 
schools, or books, or patrons and friends, or peculiar 
events and influences, can be pointed out, as auxiliary 
aids in the development of intellectual or moral 
greatness. There is always some human or natural 
cause, or combination of causes, which accounts for 
the final result. In the case of Christ no such natu- 
ral explanation can be given. All the attempts to 
bring him into contact with Egyptian wisdom, or the 



THEIR HISTORIC VERITY. 237 

Essenic theosophy, or other sources of learning, are 
without a shadow of proof; and, even if he had been 
in connection with some sources of learning, the phe- 
nomenon he presents would remain unexplained, for, 
as we shall show, he taught the w x orld as one who 
had learned nothing from it, and was under no obli- 
gation to it. 

Another fact in the life of Jesus which leaves its 
astounding results unexplained on natural grounds, 
is his early death. On this point we will quote Mr. 
Young in full : " He, whom Christians recognize as 
the Redeemer of the world, was only a youth. 
"Whether his religion be regarded as a system of 
doctrines, or as a body of laws, or as a source of 
extraordinary influence, it is passing strange that he 
should have died in early life. His brief period of 
existence afforded no opportunity for maturing any 
thing. In point of fact, while he lived he did very 
little in the common sense of doing. He originated 
no series of well-concerted plans, he neither con- 
trived nor put in motion any extended machinery, 
he entered into no correspondence with parties in his 
own country and in other regions of the world, in 
order to spread his influence and obtain cooperation. 
Even the few who were his constant companions, 
and were warmly attached to his person, were not, 
in his lifetime, imbued with his sentiments, and 
were not prepared to take up his work in his spirit 
after he was gone. He constituted no society with 
its name, design, and laws all definitely fixed and 
formally established. He had no time to construct 
and to organize, his life was too short; and almost 
all that he did was to speak. He spoke in familiar 
conversation with his friends, or at the wayside to 



238 THE GOSPEL RECORDS : 

passers-by, or to those who chose to consult him, or 
to large assemblies, as opportunity offered. He left 
behind him a few spoken truths — not a line or w^ord 
of writing — and a certain spirit incarnated in his 
principles, and breathed out from his life, and then 
he died. In the ordinary course of events the mem- 
ory of a mere youth, however distinguished, would 
soon have utterly perished from among men. But 
Jesus lives in the world at this moment, and has in- 
fluenced the world from his death till now. This is 
an unquestioned fact. There have been multitudes 
in all the ages since his death, and at this moment, 
after nearly two thousand years, there are multitudes 
to whom he is dearer than life. History tells of war- 
riors who reached the summit of their fame in com- 
parative youth ; it tells of men of science also, and 
of scholars, and of statesmen, who in youth rose to 
great and envied distinction. But the difference is 
obvious, and it is wide between the conquest of ter- 
ritory and the conquest of minds — between scientific, 
literary, or political renown and moral, spiritual in- 
fluence and excellence. Is there an instance of a 
man who died in youth, gaining vast influence of a 
purely-spiritual kind, not by force of arms, and not 
by secular aid in any form, but simply and only by 
his principles and his life — of such a man transmit- 
ting that influence through successive generations, 
and after two thousand years retaining it in all its 
freshness, and continuing, at that distance of time, to 
establish himself, and to reign almightily in the 
minds and hearts of myriads of human beings ? If 
there be, or any thing approaching to it, where is it? 
There is not such an example in the whole history 
of the world, except Jesus Christ." 



THEIR HISTORIC VERITY. 239 

"There is," says Dr. Schaff, " another striking dis- 
tinction of a general character between Christ and 
the heroes of history. We should naturally suppose 
that such an uncommon personage, setting up the 
most astounding claims and proposing the most ex- 
traordinary work, would surround himself with ex- 
traordinary circumstances, and maintain a position 
far above the vulgar and degraded multitude around 
him. ^\Ye should expect something uncommon and 
striking in his look, his dress, his manner, his mode 
of speech, his outward life, and the train of his at- 
tendants. But the very reverse is the case. His 
greatness is singularly unostentatious, modest and 
quiet, and, far from repelling the beholder, it attracts 
and invites him to familiar approach. His public 
life never moved on the imposing arena of secular 
heroism, but within the humble circle of every-day 
life, and the simple relations of a son, a brother, a 
citizen, a teacher, and a friend. He had no army to 
command, no kingdom to rule, no prominent station 
to fill, no worldly favors and rewards to dispense. 
He was a humble individual, without friends and 
patrons in the Sanhedrim, or at the court of Herod. 
He never mingled in familiar intercourse with the 
religious or social leaders of the nation, whom he had 
startled in his twelfth year by his questions and an- 
swers. He selected his disciples from among the 
illiterate fishermen of Galilee, and promised them no 
reward in this world but a part in the bitter cup of 
his sufferings. He dined with publicans and sinners, 
and mingled with the common people without ever 
condescending to their low manners and habits. He 
was so poor that he had no place on which to rest 
his head. He depended for the supply of his modest 



240 THE GOSPEL RECORDS : 

wants on voluntary contributions of a few pious fe- 
males, and the purse was in the hands of a thief ana 
a traitor. Nor had he learning, art, or eloquence, in 
the usual sense of the term, nor any other kind of 
power by which great men arrest the attention and 
secure the admiration of the world. The writers of 
Greece and Rome were ignorant even of his exist- 
ence till, several years after the crucifixion, the ef- 
fects of his mission in the steady growth of the sect 
of his followers forced from them some contemptuous 
notice, and then roused them to opposition. And 
yet this Jesus of Nazareth, without money and arms, 
conquered more millions than Alexander, Caesar, Mo- 
hammed, and Napoleon; without science and learn- 
ing, he shed more light on things human and divine 
than all scholars and philosophers combined ; with- 
out the eloquence of schools, he spoke words of life 
as were never spoken before or since, and produced 
effects which lie beyond the reach of orator or poet; 
without writing a single line, he has set more pens 
in motion, and furnished themes for more sermons, 
orations, discussions, learned volumes, works of art, 
and sweet songs of praise, than the whole army of 
great men of ancient and modern times. Born in a 
manger, and crucified as a malefactor, he now con- 
trols the destinies of the civilized world, and rules a 
spiritual empire which embraces one-third of the 
inhabitants of the globe. There never was in this 
world a life so unpretending, modest, and lowly in 
its outward form and condition, and yet producing 
such extraordinary effects upon all ages, nations, and 
classes of men. The annals of history produce no 
other example of such complete and astounding suc- 
cess in spite of the absence of those material, literary, 



THEIR HISTORIC VERITY. 241 

and artistic influences which are indispensable to 
success for a mere man." 

AYe have seen that the outer conditions of the life 
of Jesus make its astounding results utterly inex- 
plicable on the basis of ordinary history, experience, 
and psychology. The same is true with regard to 
the unlimited scope of his mind and the perfect sym- 
metry of his character. Let us first consider the one 
great central idea of his mission, that of the estab- 
lishment of a new spiritual kingdom: ' ; Contrary to 
every religious prejudice of his nation, and even of 
his time," says Horace Eushnell, "contrary to the 
comparatively-narrow and exclusive religion of Closes 
itself, and to all his training under it* he undertakes 
to organize a kingdom of God, or a kingdom of 
heaven on earth. His purpose includes a new moral 
creation of the race — not of the Jews only, but of the 
whole human race. He declared thus, at an early 
date in his ministry, that man}' shall come from the 
east and the west and sit down with Abraham, and 
Isaac, and Jacob in the kingdom of God; that the 
field is the world ; and that God so ioveth the world 
as to give for it his only-begotten Son. He also de- 
clared that his Gospel shall be published to all na- 
tions, and gave his apostles their commission to go 
into all the world and publish his Gospel to every 
creature. Here, then, we have the grand idea of his 
mission— it is to new-create the human raGe, and 



* And yet it has been asserted that Jesus' conception of his Messianic mission 
was nothing more than a reflection of the popular opinions of his day, more 
or less modified by his own individuality ! Of all the attempts to account for 
the work and character of Christ on natural grounds, denying the Divine ele- 
ment, this is the most unscrupulous and absurd. For nothing can be proved 
more irrefutably than this, that Jesus' conception of his Messianic mission was 
diametrically opposed to the Hessianic ideas which prevailed among the Jew- 
ish people. 

21 



242 THE GOSPEL RECORDS: 

restore it to God in the unity of a spiritual kingdom. 
And, upon this single fact, Eeinhard erects a com- 
plete argument for his extra-human character, going 
into a formal review of all the great founders of 
States, and most celebrated law-givers, all the phi- 
losophers, all the prophet-founders of religions, and 
discovering as a fact that no such thought as this, or 
nearly proximate to this, had ever before been taken 
up by any living character in history ; showing, also, 
how it had happened to every other great character, 
however liberalized by culture, to be limited in some 
way to the interests of his own people or empire, and 
set in opposition or antagonism more or less de- 
cidedly to the rest of the world. But to Jesus alone, 
the simple Galilean carpenter, it happens otherwise; 
that, having never seen a map of the world, or heard 
the name of half the great nations on it, he under- 
takes, coming out of his shop, a scheme as much 
vaster and more difficult than that of Alexander, as 
it proposes more, and what is more divinely benevo- 
lent! This thought of a universal kingdom, cemented 
in God — why, the immense Eoman Empire of his 
day, constructed by so many ages of war and con- 
quest, is a bauble in comparison, both as regards the 
extent and the cost! And yet the rustic tradesman 
of Galilee propounds even this for his errand, and 
that in a way of assurance as simple and quiet as if 
the immense reach of his plan were, in fact, a matter 
to him of no consideration. Nor is this all : there is 
included in his plan, what, to any mere man, would 
be yet more remote from the possible confidence of 
his frailty; it is a plan as universal in time as it is 
in the scope of its objects. It does not expect to be 
realized in a lifetime, or even in many centuries to 



THEIR HISTORIC VERITY. 243 

come. He calls it, under standingly, his grain of mus- 
tard-seed; which, however, is to grow, he declares, 
and overshadow the whole earth. But the courage 
of Jesus, counting a thousand years to be only a 
single day, is equal to the run of his work. He sees 
a rock of stability where men see only frailty and 
weakness. Peter himself, the impulsive and rather- 
unreliable Peter, turns into a rock and becomes a 
good foundation, as he looks upon him. 'On this 
rock,' he says, 'I will build my Church, and the gates 
of hell shall not prevail against it.' His expectation, 
too, reaches boldly out beyond his own death; that, 
in fact, is to be the seed of his great empire; 'Ex- 
cept a corn of wheat fall into the ground and die, it 
abideth,' he says, ' alone.' And if we will see with 
what confidence and courage he adheres to his plan, 
when the time of his death approaches — how far he is 
from giving it up as lost, or as an exploded vision 
of his youthful enthusiasm — we have only to observe 
his last interview with the two sisters of Bethany, in 
whose hospitality he was so often comforted. When 
the box of precious ointment is broken upon his 
head, he justifies her against the murmuring disciples, 
and says, 'Let her alone. She has done what she 
could. She has come aforehand to anoint my body 
to the burying. Yerily, I say unto you, wheresoever 
this Gospel shall be preached throughout the whole 
world, this also that this woman has done shall be 
told for a memorial of her.' Such was the sublime 
confidence he had in a plan that was to run through 
all future ages, and would scarcely begin to show its 
fruit during his own lifetime. Is this great idea, 
then, which no man ever before conceived — the rais- 
ing of the whole human race to God, a plan sustained 



244 THE GOSPEL RECORDS : 

with such evenness of courage and a confidence of 
the world's future so far transcending any human 
example — is this a merely -human development? Be- 
gard the benevolence of it, the universality of it, the 
religious grandeur of it, as a work readjusting the re- 
lations of God and his government with men — the 
cost, the length of time it will cover, and the far-off 
date of its completion. For a Nazarene carpenter, a 
poor, uneducated villager, to lay out a project which 
can not be completed in many thousands of years, 
and transcends all human ability, doing it in all the 
airs of sobriety, entering on the performance without 
parade, and yielding life to it firmly as the inaugural 
of its triumph, is, we may safely affirm, more than 
human." 

The unparalleled universality of the mind of Jesus, 
and the perfect symmetry of his character, are com- 
prehensively set forth by Dr. Schaff in the following 
remarks : " History exhibits to us many examples of 
commanding geniuses, who stand at the head of their 
age and nation, and furnish material for the intellect- 
ual activity of w T hole generations and periods, till 
they are succeeded by other heroes at a new epoch 
of development. As rivers generally spring from 
high mountains, so knowledge and moral power rises 
and is continually nourished from the hights of hu- 
manity But they never represent uni- 
versal, but only sectional humanity ; they are identi- 
fied with a particular people or age, and partake of 
its errors, superstitions, and failings almost in the 
same proportion in which they exhibit their virtues. 
Moses, though revered by the followers of three re- 
ligions, was a Jew in views, feelings, habits, and po- 
sition, as well as by parentage ; Socrates never rose 



THEIR HISTORIC VERITY. 245 

above the Greek tj^pe of character; Luther was a 
German throughout, and can only be properly under- 
stood as a German ; Calvin, though an exile from his 
native land, remained a Frenchman ; and Washing- 
ton, the purest and noblest type of the American 
character, can be to no nation on earth what he is to 
the American. Their influence may and does extend 
far beyond their respective national horizon, yet 
they can never furnish a universal model for imita- 
tion What these representative men are 

to particular ages, or nations, or sects, or particular 
schools of science and art, Christ was to the human 
family at large in its relation to God. He, and he 
alone, is the universal type for universal imitation. 
Hence he could, without the least impropriety or 
suspicion of vanity, call upon all men to follow him. 
He stands above the limitations of age, school, sect, 
nation, and race. Although a Jew according to the 
flesh, there is nothing Jewish about him which is not 
at the same time of general significance. The par- 
ticular and national in him is always duly subordin- 
ated to the general and human. Still less was he 
ever identified with a party or sect. He was equally 
removed from the stiff formalism of the Pharisees, 
the loose liberalism of the Sadducees, and the inact- 
ive mysticism of the Essenes. He rose above all the 
prejudices, bigotries, and superstitions of his age and 
people, which exert their power even upon the 
strongest and otherwise most liberal minds. Witness 
his freedom in the observance of the Sabbath, by 
which he offended the scrupulous literalists, while he 
fulfilled the true spirit of the law in its universal 
and abiding significance ; his reply to the disciples, 
when they traced the misfortune of the blind man to 



246 THE GOSPEL RECORDS: 

a particular sin of the subject, or his parents ; his 
liberal conduct toward the Samaritans as contrasted 
"with the inveterate hatred and prejudice of the Jews, 
including his own disciples, at the time; and his 
charitable judgment of the slaughtered Galileans, 
whose blood Pilate had mingled with their sacrifices, 
and the eighteen upon whom the tower in Siloam 
fell and slew them. All the words and all the actions 
of Christ, while they were fully adapted to the occa- 
sions which called them forth, retain their force and 
applicability undiminished to all ages and nations. 
. . . . He was free from all one-sidedness, which 
constitutes the weakness as well as the strength of 
the most eminent men. He was not a man of one 
idea, nor of one virtue, towering above all the rest. 
The mental and moral forces were so well tempered 
and moderated by each other that none were unduly 
prominent, none carried to excess, none alloyed by 
the kindred failing ; each was checked and completed 
by the opposite grace. His character never lost its 
even balance and happy equilibrium, never needed 
modification or readjustment. It was thoroughly 
sound and uniformly consistent from the beginning 
to the end. We can not properly attribute to him 
any one temperament. He was neither sanguine like 
Peter, nor choleric like Paul, nor melancholy like 
John, nor phlegmatic as James is sometimes repre- 
sented to have been ; but he combined the vivacity 
without the levity of the sanguine, the vigor without 
the violence of the choleric, the seriousness without 
the austerity of the melancholic, the calmness with- 
out the apathy of the phlegmatic temperanents. He 
was equally far removed from the excesses of the 
legalist, the pietist, the ascetic, and the enthusiast. 



THEIR HISTORIC VERITY. 247 

With the strictest obedience to the law, he moved in 
the element of freedom ;_with all the fervor of the en- 
thusiast, he was always calm, sober, and self-pos- 
sessed ; notwithstanding his complete and uniform 
elevation above the affairs of this world, he freely 
mingled with society, male and female, dined with 
publicans and sinners, sat at the wedding feast, shed 
tears at the sepulcher. delighted in God's nature, ad- 
mired the beauties of the lilies, and used the occupa- 
tions of the husbandman for the illustration of the 
sublimest truths of the kingdom of heaven. His 
zeal never degenerated into rashness, nor his con- 
stancy into obstinacy, nor his tenderness into senti- 
mentality. His unworldliness was free from indiffer- 
ence and unsociability, his dignity from pride, his 
affability from undue familiarity, his self-denial from 
moroseness, his temperance from austerity. He com- 
bined childlike innocence with manly strength, all- 
absorbing devotion to God with untiring interest in 
the welfare of man, tender love to the sinner with 
uncompromising severity against sin, commanding 
dignity with winning humility, fearless courage with 
wise caution, unyielding firmness with sweet gentle- 
ness. He is justly compared with the lion in 
strength, and with the lamb in meekness. He 
equally possessed the wisdom of the serpent and the 
simplicity of the dove. He brought both the sword 
against every form of wickedness, and the peace 
which the world can not give. He was the most 
effective, and yet the least noisy, the most radical, 
and yet the most conservative, calm, and patient of 
all reformers. He came to fulfill every letter of the 
law, and yet he made all things new. The same 
hand which drove the profane traffickers from the 



248 THE GOSPEL RECORDS I 

Temple, blessed little children, healed the lepers, and 
resuscitated the sinking disciple; the same ear which 
heard the approbation from heaven, was oj>en to the 
cries of women in travail; the same mouth which 
pronounced the terrible woe on the hypocrites, and 
condemned the impure desire and unkind feeling as 
well as the open crime, blessed the poor in spirit, an- 
nounced pardon to the adulteress, and prayed for his 
murderers; the same eye which beheld the mysteries 
of God and penetrated the heart of man, shed tears 
of compassion over ungrateful Jerusalem, and tears 
of friendship at the grave of Lazarus. These are in- 
deed opposite, yet not contradictory traits of charac- 
ter — as little as the different manifestations of God's 
power and goodness in the tempest and the sunshine, 
in the towering Alps and the lily of the valley, in 
the boundless ocean and dew-drops of the morning. 
They are separated in imperfect men, indeed, but 
united in Christ, the universal model for all." 

Though the above sketch comprises all the ele- 
ments which constitute mental and moral perfection,* 
we can not- refrain from adding a few lineaments 
drawn by Bushnell, when he considers him as a 
teacher, his method and manner, and other charac- 
teristics, apart from his doctrine which does not come 
into consideration in our present investigation: 

" First of all, we notice the perfect originality and 
independence of his teaching. We have a great- many 
men who are original within a certain boundary of 
educated thought. But the originality of Christ is 

*We are aware that we anticipate in part the subject-matter of the subse- 
quent section on the moral perfection of Christ ; but it is impossible to consider 
mental entirely apart from moral perfection. Besides, the moral perfection of 
Christ will be viewed for itself, as sinlessness. Here we consider only his moral 
as well as mental greatness. 



THEIR HISTORIC VERITY. 249 

uneducated. That he draws nothing from the stores 
of learning can be seen at a glance. The impression 
we have in reading his instructions justifies to the 
letter the language of his cotemporaries, when they 
say, ' This man hath never learned.' There is noth- 
ing in any of his allusions, or forms of speech, that 
indicates learning. Indeed, there is nothing in him 
that belongs to his age or country — no one opinion, 
or taste, or prejudice. If he is simply a man, he is 
most certainly a new and singular kind of man, 
never before heard of, one who is quite as great a 
miracle in the world as if he were not a man. 

"Neither does he teach by the human methods. 
He does not speculate about God, as a school-profes- 
sor, drawing out conclusions by a practice on words, 
and deeming that the way of proof; he does not build 
up a frame of evidence from below, by some con- 
structive process, such as the philosophers delight in ; 
but he simply speaks of God and spiritual things as 
one who has come out from him to tell us what he 
knows. And his simple telling brings us the reality; 
proves it to us in its own sublime self-evidence; 
awakens even the consciousness of it in our own 
bosom, so that formal arguments or dialectic proofs 
offend us by their coldness. Indeed, he makes even 
the world luminous by his words — fills it with an 
immediate and new sense of God, which nothing has 
ever been able to expel. 

"At the same time, he never reveals the infirmity 
so commonly shown by human teachers, when they 
veer a little from their point, or turn their doctrine 
off by shades of variation, to catch the assent of mul- 
titudes. He never conforms to an expectation, even 
of his friends. When they look to find a great 



250 THE GOSPEL RECORDS : 

prophet in him, he offers nothing in the modes of 
the prophets. When they ask for places of distinc- 
tion in his kingdom, he rebukes their folly, and tells 
them he has nothing to give but a share in his re- 
proaches and his poverty. When they look to see 
him take the sword as the Great Messiah of their 
nation, calling the people to his standard, he tells 
them he is no warrior and no king, but only a mes- 
senger of love to lost men ; one that has come to 
minister and die, but not to set up or restore the 
kingdom. Every expectation that rises up to greet 
him is repulsed ; and yet, so great is the power of his 
manner, that multitudes are held fast, and can not 
yield their confidence. 

"Again, the singular balance of character displayed 
in the teachings of Jesus, indicates an exemption 
from the standing infirmity of human nature. Hu- 
man opinions are formed under a law that seems to be 
universal. First, two opposite extremes are thrown 
up in two opposite leaders or parties ; then a third 
party enters, trying to find what truth they both are 
endeavoring to vindicate, and settle thus a view of 
the subject that includes the truth and clears the one- 
sided extremes. It results, in this manner, that no 
man, even the broadest in his apprehensions, is ever 
at the point of equilibrium as regards all subjects. 
Even the ripest of us are continually falling into 
some extreme and losing our balance, afterward to be 
corrected by some others who discover our error, or 
that of our school.* But Christ was of no school or 



*It is worthy of note, that, while all other teachers have been refuted in 
something, no errors in science, theology, or morals, or no inconsistency with 
his own system has ever been, even plausibly, charged upon Jesus, though his 
sayings anticipate the sanction or condemnation of all religious thought, civili- 
zation, and philosophy. 



THEIR HISTORIC VERITY. 251 

party, and never went to any extreme — words could 
never turn him to a one-sided view of any thing. 
This is the remarkable fact that distinguishes him 
from any other teacher of the world. Having noth- 
ing to work out in a world-process, but every thing 
clear in the simple intuition of his superhuman intel- 
ligence, he never pushes himself to any human eccen- 
tricity. It does not even appear that he is trying, as 
we do, to balance opposites and clear extravagances, 
but he does it as one who can not imagine a one- 
sided view of any thing. He will not allow his dis- 
ciples to deny him before kings and governors ; he 
will not let them renounce their allegiance to Csesar. 
He exposes the oppressions of the Pharisees in Moses' 
seat, but, encouraging no factious resistance, says, 
< Do as they command you.' His position as a re- 
former was universal — according to his principles 
almost nothing, whether in Church, or State, or in 
social life, was right — and yet he is thrown into no 
antagonism against the world. With all the world 
upon his hands, and a reform to be carried in almost 
every thing, he is yet as quiet and cordial, and as 
little in the attitude of bitterness or impatience, as if 
all hearts were with him, or the work already done; 
so perfect is the balance of his feeling, so intuitively 

moderated is it by wisdom not human 

1 Judge not,' he says, in holy charity, 'that ye be not 
judged;' and, in holy exactness, 'Whosoever shall 
break, or teach to break one of these least command- 
ments, shall be least in the kingdom of God;' in the 
same way, 'He that is not with us is against us;' 
and, 'he that is not against us is for us;' 'Ye tithe 
mint, anise, and cummin;' and, 'These things ought 
ye to have done, and not to leave the other undone.' 



252 THE GOSPEL RECORDS: 

So magnificent and sublime, so plainly Divine is the 
balance of Jesus! Nothing throws him off the cen- 
ter on which truth rests ; no prejudice, no opposition, 
no attempt to right a mistake, or rectify a delusion, 
or reform a practice. If this be human, I do not 
know, for one, what it is to be human. 

" Again, it is a remarkable and even superhuman 
distinction of Jesus, that, while he is advancing doc- 
trines so far transcending all deductions of philos- 
ophy, and opening mysteries that defy all human 
power of explication, he is yet able to set his teach- 
ings in a form of simplicity that accommodates all 
classes of minds; and this for the reason that he 
speaks directly to men's convictions themselves, with- 
out and apart from any learned and curious elabora- 
tion, such as the uncultivated can not follow. Eo 
one of the great writers of antiquity had even pro- 
pounded, as yet, a doctrine of virtue which the mul- 
titude could understand. But Jesus tells them di- 
rectly, in a manner level to their understanding, 
what they want, what they must do and be, to in- 
herit eternal life, and their inmost convictions an- 
swer to his words. 

"Call him then, who will, a mere man; what hu- 
man teacher ever came down thus upon the soul of 
the race as a beam of light from the skies — pure 
light, shining directly into the visual orb of the mind, 
a light for all that live, a full, transparent day, in 
which truth bathes the spirit as an element? Others 
talk and speculate about truth, and those who can 
may follow; but Jesus is the truth, and he lives it; 
and if he is a mere human teacher, he is the first 
who was ever able to find a form for truth at all ad- 
equate to the world's uses. And yet the truths he 



THEIR HISTORIC VERITY. 253 

teaches outreach all the doctrines of all the philos- 
ophers of the world. He excels them, a hundredfold 
more, in the scope and grandeur of his doctrine, than 
he does in his simplicity itself. Is this human, or is 
it Divine? 

" Once more, it is a high distinction of Christ's 
character, as seen in his teachings, that he is never 
anxious for the success of his doctrine. Fully con- 
scious of the fact that the world is against him, 
scoffed at, despised, hated, alone too in his cause, and 
without partisans that have an}' public influence, no 
man has ever been able to detect in him the least 
anxiety for the final success of his doctrine. The 
consciousness of Truth, we are not about to deny, 
has an effect of this nature in every truly-great 
mind. But when has it had an effect so complete? 
What human teacher, what great philosopher has not 
shown some traces of anxiety for his school that in- 
dicated his weakness? But here is a lone man, a 
humble, uneducated man, finding all the world against 
him, and yet the world does not rest on its axle more 
firmly than he upon his doctrine. Questioned by 
Pilate what he means by truth, it is enough to an- 
swer, ' He that is of the truth heareth my voice.' If 
this be not more than human, no other man of the 
race, we are sure, has ever dignified humanity by a 
like example. 

" Such is Christ as a teacher. When has the world 
seen a phenomenon like this? A lonely, uninstructed 
youth, coming forth amid the moral darkness of Gal- 
ilee, even more distinct from his age, and from every 
thing around him, than a Plato would be rising up 
alone in some wild tribe in Oregon, assuming thus a 
position at the head of the world, and maintaining 



254 THE GOSPEL RECORDS: 

it for eighteen centuries by the pure self-evidence of 
his life and doctrine ! Does he this by the force of 
mere human talent or genius? If so, it is time that 
we begin to look to genius for miracles ; for there is 
really no greater miracle." 

We close this section with some remarks of Dr. 
Ullman in regard to the hypothesis, that the won- 
derful character of Christ was not drawn from actual 
life, but from the mind of those who record his life: 
"Modern criticism holds the opinion, that the picture 
of the personality of Jesus was the work of the fancy 
of the earliest Christian Church, who invented, after 
his death, this description of the founder of their 
religion. But this runs counter to all historical 
analogy. The great revolutions of history have not 
been effected by fictitious personages, but by living 
men ; and those men must have possessed within 
themselves a real power corresponding to, and ac- 
counting for, the influence they possessed. Then, it 
is not conceivable that a community — that is, a num- 
ber of individuals differently constituted — should 
have succeeded in producing so harmonious a char- 
acter. Or, is it imagined that one man was the au- 
thor of this image ? In that case, we are at a loss to 
understand how that individual could produce so rare 
a work. We must, moreover, have to rank him 
higher than the object which called forth his invent- 
ive power ; to him we must accord the meed of 
wonder and praise which we withhold from Jesus. 
But we should not thus find an explanation of the 
problem, which has indeed only become more difficult 
and involved. For in this case, as well as in the 
former, the first question which we put is still this, 
How is it, that an ideal of so perfect a kind ever 



THEIR HISTORIC VERITY. 255 

came into the mind of man. whether of many men 
or of one individual? .... How could a form 
of a sublime majesty, such as mankind had till then 
no conception of, and would not have at this day if 
it had not been here presented to us ; how could that 
appear upon the bounded horizon of a Jewish mind? 
Or could the idea of him who was the first to em- 
brace, in his boundless love, the whole human race, 
arise within the narrow consciousness of an Israel- 
ite? Further, the incredulity of all this will be fully 
apparent, if we take into consideration the education 
and mental training of the first disciples. They were 
plain, simple men; untrained as authors; the large 
proportion of them were any thing but men of fancy 
and imagination. They were, moreover, men of sin- 
cerity and simplicity in their religious belief; hence 
they would not have invented had they been able. And 
even if they would, it is certain that they could never 
have succeeded in achieving, with the means at their 
disposal — humanly speaking, so insignificant — what 
the masters of thought and of discourse, a Plato and 
a Xenophon, had, in their account of Socrates, failed 
to accomplish. Let criticism show us that any thing 
similar occurs elsewhere in the page of history ! 
Till it does so — and it never will be able to do so — 
we shall continue to maintain — what seems so abund- 
antly evident to every healthy mind — that the rea- 
son why the disciples have been able to place before 
our eye in such vivid reality so great a majesty of 
moral character, is, that they themselves had seen in 
real life one who manifested those qualities. The in- 
imitable nature of the Gospel picture must ever re- 
main one of its leading characteristics. But the fact 
that it can not be imitated is a pledge of its truth." 



256 THE GOSPEL RECORDS: 

§ 29. The Sinlessness of Jesus, the Idea of which could not 

have been conceived by the evangelists, if they 

had not seen it actualized in the llfe of 

Jesus — inconte stably proving that 

He was not a Mere Man. 

Before we proceed to apply sinlessness to the per- 
son of Jesus, it is proper to define the term, and to 
make some remarks on the scope and importance of 
the investigation before us, in doing which we give 
a condensation of the elaborate argumentation of 
Ullmann. The idea of sinlessness is, in the first in- 
stance, a negative one. It is the absence of antag- 
onism to the moral law, and to the Divine will, of 
which that law is the expression ; and this not only 
in relation to separate acts of will and outward 
actions, but also in relation to the tendency of the 
whole moral nature, and to its most deep-seated dis- 
position. Doubtless this conception is in itself of 
great importance, inasmuch as it marks off, more dis- 
tinctly than any other, the line of demarcation be- 
tween moral purity and any trace of moral pollution. 
Yet it is not sufficient to regard sinlessness as the 
absence of all opposition to the moral law. For the 
conception of sinlessness is one which, like that of 
sin, can be applied only to natures such as have been 
appointed to will and to do in the capacity of moral 
agents ; in the case of which, therefore, the omission 
of such willing and doing is itself a deviation from 
the divine law of life. Sinlessness must, therefore, 
imply positive goodness — goodness of nature, and 
goodness in action. It is in this sense of the word, 
not as negative merely, but as essentially positive, 
that we apply the epithet "sinless" to Jesus. By 
this epithet he is characterized as not only free from 



THEIR HISTORIC VERITY. 257 

all sin, but as holy. By it is meant that he was filled 
at every moment of his life with the spirit of obedi- 
ence, and with a love to God which surrendered itself 
unconditionally to his will, and with those powers 
which flow from an uninterrupted communion with 
God. Such sinlessness can be predicated only of an 
individual in whose case, on the one hand, the im- 
possibility of sinning does not follow at once from a 
necessity of his nature, who, in other words, is sus- 
ceptible of being tempted,* and whom, on the other 
hand, we may believe endowed with an integrity of 
moral nature, by the right use of which the possi- 
bility of not sinning becomes an impossibility of sin- 
ning. In a case where both these conditions are ful- 
filled, the development of a life altogether pure and 
holy is conceivable; a life it would be which we 
should have to regard as at once typically perfect — 
raised far above every thing which history tells us 
of, and, at the same time, as truly human ; and this 
is what we hold the moral character and life of Jesus 
to have been. 

*The question, how far it can be affirmed, from a dogmatical or specula- 
tive stand-point, that sinfulness or actual transgression in Christ is a priori 
inconceivable, is out of the scope of our present investigation. It will be 
fully considered in our comments on the temptation of Christ, (Matt, iv.) It 
is sufficient here to remark, that we must be careful to distinguish the pos- 
sibility of sinning from a leaning or bent toward sin. Sin may be possible 
where it has not existed in the faintest degree; but a penchant toward sin is 
inconsistent with sinlessness, for it involves a germ, a minimum of sin. The 
possibility of sin must be presupposed in Jesus, ere we can conceive tbat 
Jesus could be tempted. A liability to be tempted does not in itself imply 
the existence of any evil ; for even tbe purest virtue, if it dwells in a finite nature, 
is liable to be tempted. The impossibility of sinning, in the abstract, can 
be ascribed to the infinite God alone; of him it is true in the absolute neces- 
sity of his nature — a necessity which is identical with the highest liberty. 
Had Jesus been endowed with an absolute impossibility of sin, he could not 
have been a true man ; his temptation is, therefore, presented to us in the 
Scriptures as one of the most marked features of his history, and as the in- 
dispensable condition of his typical character, while, at the same time, the 
possibility of sin in him never became actual fact. 

22 



258 THE GOSPEL RECORDS : 

Hitherto the doctrine of the sinless character of 
Christ has been almost invariably contemplated in 
the light of an immediate postulate of faith, as a 
necessary consequence of the incarnation, or as an 
indispensable condition of the work of Christ as Ke- 
deemer; and those who have thus treated it, have not 
proceeded from this stand-point to a more detailed 
investigation and proof of the fact itself. We, on 
the contrary, will leave out of account this immediate 
conviction of the truth of the doctrine — without, at 
the same time, calling it in question, or denying that 
it may be right and valid in its own place — and 
begin by seeking to establish and vindicate our belief 
in the sinlessness of Christ. In the mode of proof 
that we shall adopt in so doing, our arguments will 
be drawn from the historical appearance of Christ. 
We do not say: Because Christ was the Son of God, 
he could not be subject to sin ; or, because he was 
the Eedeemer, he must have been free from sin. 
What we say is : Because he was free from sin, and 
showed himself in all respects perfectly pure and 
holy, we are warranted in believing that he was the 
Son of God, the deliverer from all sin, the author of 
true redemption, and the revealer of redeeming truth. 
Now, while we follow this historical and apologetical 
course, we do not mean to assert that the dogmatical 
or philosophical course is valueless. We are per- 
suaded that, if both methods are rightly pursued, 
they must lead to the same result. Doctrinally to 
maintain the sinlessness of Christ were to believe an 
empty form, if that doctrine had no basis of histor- 
ical reality; and the historical reality would lie on 
something fragmentary and detached, were it not or- 
ganically united w T ith the sum total of the Christian 



THEIR HISTORIC VERITY. 259 

system. Bat while the two methods mutually pre- 
suppose and require one another, still, in their 
practical treatment, they must be carefully distin- 
guished. 

The apologetical mode of presenting the sinless- 
ness of Jesus has a very peculiar inrport, in that it 
appeals to the moral consciousness of men. The 
truly-convincing evidences for Christianity are those 
which are at once theoretical and practical; for the 
object is not only by the use of argument to convince 
the understanding, but at the same time to touch the 
conscience, to move the will, and to give a decided 
impulse to the spirit, and a new direction to the 
whole life. The entrance into the domain of Chris- 
tianity is not to be gained by a mere process of 
thought, but can only be attained by undergoing a 
new process of life, a radical change of the moral 
nature. Now, the subject which we have here to con- 
sider speaks directly to the conscience. The image 
of Jesus rises up before the soul as a thing that has 
really been, in all its clear and stainless purity. 
True, it can never be reproduced as a living reality 
in us, without shivering and shattering all our vir- 
tuous conceits, without casting us, as sinful men, 
prostrate in the dust before the Holy One. But 
while it thus humbles us, it exalts us too, and draws 
us with an inwardly-overpowering might into the 
communion of holy and compassionate Divine love, 
shining forth on us from him as the brightest mirror. 
If Jesus is holy, free from sin, and true to the exclu- 
sion of all error, and thus stands upon a platform 
elevated high above the common fate of mortals, all 
of whom, without exception, are subject to error and 
to sin — then we are both entitled and enjoined to 



260 THE GOSPEL RECORDS: 

reverence in him — in his whole manifestation upon 
earth, in all that he did and all that he taught — the 
exponent of the will of God concerning man; then 
we have every warrant to look to him, the Sinless 
One, as the author of our deliverance from sin, to 
him, being one with the Father, as the restorer of 
true union with God. It is thus that the apologet- 
ical mode of presenting the sinlessness of Jesus, while 
it vindicates belief, is at the same time fitted to call 
forth and increase the same. 

After these preliminary remarks, let us contem- 
plate the portrait of the moral perfection of Christ. 
We find it most comprehensively drawn by Dr. Schaff, 
and give it — detached from other traits of his char- 
acter which we have dwelt upon in the preceding 
section, and from considerations to which we shall 
draw the attention afterward. He says : 

" The first impression which we receive from the 
life of Jesus, is that of its perfect innocency in the 
midst of a sinful world. He, and he alone, carried 
the innocency of a pure childhood untarnished 

through his youth and manhood Of the 

boyhood of Jesus we know only one fact, recorded 
by Luke; but it is in perfect keeping with the pe- 
culiar charm of his childhood, and foreshadows at the 
same time the glory of his public life, as one unin- 
terrupted service of his Heavenly Father. When 
twelve years old we find him in the Temple, in the 
midst of the Jewish doctors, not teaching and offend- 
ing them, as in the apocryphal Gospels, by any im- 
modesty or forwardness, but hearing and asking 
questions, thus actually learning from them; and yet 
filling them with astonishment at his understanding 
and answers. There is nothing premature, forced, or 



THEIR HISTORIC VERITY. 261 

unbecoming his age, and yet a degree of wisdom and 
an intensity of interest in religion which rises far 
above a purely-human youth. 'He increased,' we are 
told, 'in wisdom and stature, and in favor with God 
and man ; he was subject to his jDarents, and practiced 
all the virtues of an obedient son ; and yet he filled 
them with a sacred awe as they saw him absorbed 
'in the things of his Father,' and heard him utter 
words which they were unable to understand at the' 
time, but which Mary treasured up in her heart as a 
holy secret. Such an idea of a harmless and faultless, 
heavenly childhood, of a growing, learning, and yet 
surprisingly-wise boyhood, as it meets us in living re- 
ality at the portal of the Gospel history, never entered 
the imagination of biographer, poet, or philosopher 
before. On the contrary, as has been justly observed 
by Horace Bushnell, 'in all the higher ranges of 
character, the excellence portrayed is never the 
simple unfolding of a harmonious and perfect beauty 
contained in the germ of childhood, but it is a char- 
acter formed by a process of rectification in which 
many follies are mended and distempers removed, in 
which confidence is checked by defeat, passion mod- 
erated by reason, smartness sobered by experience. 
Commonly a certain pleasure is taken in showing 
how the many wayward sallies of the boy are, at 
length, reduced by discipline to the character of wis- 
dom, justice, and public heroism so much admired. 
Besides, if any writer, of almost any age, will under- 
take to describe, not merely a spotless, but a superhu- 
man or celestial childhood, not having the reality be- 
fore him, he must be somewhat more than human 
himself if he does not pile together a mass of clumsy 
exaggerations, and draw and overdraw, till neither 



262 THE GOSPEL RECORDS: 

heaven nor earth can find any verisimilitude in the 
picture.' This unnatural exaggeration, into which 
the mythical fancy of man, in its endeavor to produce 
a superhuman childhood and boyhood, will inevitably 
fall, is strikingly exhibited in the apocryphal Gospels, 
which are related to the canonical Gospels as the 
counterfeit to the genuine coin, or as a revolting cari- 
cature to the inimitable original, but which, by the 
very contrast, tend, negatively, to corroborate the 
truth of Evangelical history. While the Evangelists 
expressly reserve the performance of miracles to the 
age of maturity and public life, and observe a signifi- 
cant silence concerning the parents of Jesus, the 
pseudo-evangelists fill the infancy and early years of 
the Savior with the strangest prodigies. 

" In vain w T e look through the entire biography of 
Christ for a single stain, or the slightest shadow on 
his moral character. There never lived a more harm- 
less being on earth. He injured nobody, he took ad- 
vantage of nobody, he never spoke an improper word, 
he never committed a wrong action.* The manner 
of expelling the profane traffickers from the Temple 
is the only instance which modern criticism has dared 
to quote against his freedom from the faults of hu- 
manity. But the very effect which it produced 
shows that, far from being the outburst of passion, 
the expulsion was a judicial act of a religious re- 
former, vindicating in just and holy zeal the honor 
of the Lord of the Temple, and that with a dignity 

*"No vice that has a name can be thought of in connection with Jesus 
Christ. Ingenious malignity looks in vain for the faintest trace of self-seeking 
in his motives ; sensuality shrinks abashed from his celestial purity ; falsehood 
can leave no stain on him who is incarnate truth ; injustice is forgotten beside 
his errorless equity ; the very possibility of avarice is swallowed up in his be- 
nignity and love ; the very idea of ambition is lost in his Divine wisdom and 
Divine self-abnegation." (B&yne.) 



THEIR HISTORIC VERITY. 263 

and majesty which at once silenced the offenders, 
though superior in number and physical strength, 
and made them submit to their well-deserved pun- 
ishment without a murmur, and in awe of the pres- 
ence of a superhuman power. The cursing of the 
unfruitful fig-tree can still less be urged, as it evi- 
dently was a significant symbolical act, foreshadow- 
ing the fearful doom of the impenitent Jews in the 
destruction of Jerusalem.* . . . But this freedom 
from the common sin and guilt is. after all. only 
the negative side of his character, which rises in 
magnitude as we contemplate the positive side, 
namely, his moral and religious perfection. It is 
universally admitted, even by Deists and rationalists, 
that Christ taught the purest and sublimest system 
of ethics, which throws all the moral precepts and 
maxims of the wisest men of antiquity far into the 
shade. The Sermon on the ilount alone is worth in- 
finitely more than all that Confucius, Socrates, and 
Seneca ever said or wrote on duty and virtue. But 
the difference is still greater if we come to the more 
difficult task of practice. While the wisest and best 
of men never live up even to their own imperfect 
standard of excellency, Christ fully carried out his 
perfect doctrine in his life and conduct. Tie is the 
living incarnation of the ideal standard of virtue 

* These and a few other instances in the life of Jesus — namely, the charge of 
disobedience toward his parents for remaining behind in the Temple, of inter- 
ference with the rights of property in permitting the demons to rush among 
the herd of swine, his selection of Judas to the apostlesbip, the appearance of 
untruth in John vii. 8-10 — though frivolous and scarcely worthy of notice in 
connection with a nature so elevated as that of Jesus, are folly considered in 
the exegesis of the respective passages. They certainly leave not the minutest 
stain on the purity of Jesus. The argument against the sinlessness of Jesus, 
drawn from a pretended impossibility of sinlessness in a finite nature, i- a 
mere petitio principii, and can not fall within the scope of this investigation, 
which proposes to deal only with facts. 



264 THE GOSPEL RECORDS: 

and holiness, and universally acknowledged to be 
the highest model for all that is pure, and good, and 
noble in the sight of God and man. We find him 
moving in all the ordinary and essential relations of 
life, as a son, a friend, a citizen, a teacher, at home 
and in public ; we find him among all classes of so- 
ciety, with sinners and saints, with the poor and the 
wealthy, with the sick and the healthy, with little 
children, grown men and women, with plain fisher- 
men and learned scribes, with despised publicans and 
honored members of the Sanhedrim, with friends and 
foes, with admiring disciples and bitter persecutors, 
now with an individual, as Nicodemus or the woman 
of Samaria, now in the familiar circle of the twelve, 
now in the crowds of the people ; we find him in all 
situations, in the synagogue and the Temple, at home 
and on journeys, in villages and the city of Jerusa- 
lem, in the desert and on the mountain, at the wed- 
ding feast and the grave, in Gethsemane, in the 
judgment-hall and on Calvary. In all these various 
relations, conditions, and situations, as they are now 
crowded within the few years of his public ministry, 
he sustains the same consistent character throughout, 
without ever exposing himself to censure. He ful- 
fills every duty to God, to man, and to himself, 
without a single violation of duty, and exhibits an 
entire conformity to the law, in the spirit as well 
as the letter. His life is one unbroken service of 
God in active and passive obedience to his holy will, 
one grand act of absolute love to God and love to 
man, of personal self-consecration to the glory of the 
Heavenly Father and the salvation of a fallen race. 
In the language of the people who were 'beyond 
measure astonished at his works,' we must say, the 



THEIR HISTORIC VERITY. 265 

more we study his life : 'He did all things well.' In 
a solemn appeal to his Heavenly Father, in the part- 
ing hour, he could proclaim to the world that he had 
glorified him in the earth and finished the work he 
gave him to do. 

" The first feature in this singular perfection of 
Christ's character which strikes our attention, is the 
perfect harmony of virtue and piety, of morality and 
religion, or of love to God and love to man. The 
ground-work of his character was the most intimate 
and uninterrupted union and communion with his 
Heavenly Father, from whom he derived, to whom 
he referred every thing. Already, in his twelfth 
year, he found his life-element and delight in the 
things of his Father. It was his daily food to do 
the will of Him that sent him, and to finish his 
work. To him he looked in prayer before every im- 
portant act, and taught his disciples that model 
prayer, which, for simplicity, brevity, comprehensive- 
ness, and suitableness can never be surpassed. He 
often retired to a mountain or solitary place for 
prayer, and spent days and nights in the blessed 
privilege. But so constant and uniform was his 
habit of communion with the great Jehovah, that he 
kept it up amid the multitude, and converted the 
crowded city into a religious retreat. But the piety 
of Christ was no inactive contemplation, or retiring 
mysticism and selfish enjoyment, but thoroughly 
practical, ever active in works of charity, and tend- 
ing to regenerate and transform the world into the 
kingdom of God. 'He went about doing good.' His 
life is an unbroken series of good words and virtues 
in active exercise, all proceeding from the same union 

with God, animated by the same love, and tending to 

23 



266 THE GOSPEL RECORDS: 

the same end, the glory of God and the happiness 
of man. 

"Finally, as all the active virtues meet in him, so 
he unites the passive. ]STo character can become 
complete without trial and suffering. The ancient 
Greeks and Eomans admired a good man struggling 
with misfortune as a sight worthy of the gods. Plato 
describes the righteous man as one who, without 
doing any injustice, yet has the appearance of the 
greatest injustice, and proves his own justice by per- 
severance against all calumny unto death ; yea, he 
predicts that, if such a righteous man should ever 
appear, he would be 'scourged, tortured, bound, de- 
prived of his sight, and after having suffered all pos- 
sible injury, nailed on a post.' (Politicus, p. 74, ss. 
ed., Ast., p. 361, E. ed. Bip.) No wonder that the an- 
cient Fathers saw in this remarkable passage an un- 
conscious prophecy of Christ. Eut how far is this 
ideal of the great philosopher from the actual reality, 
as it appeared three hundred years afterward ! The 
highest form of passive virtue attained by ancient 
heathenism or modern secular heroism is that stoicism 
which meets and overcomes the trials and misfortunes 
of life in the spirit of haughty contempt and unfeel- 
ing indifference, which destroys the sensibilities, and 
is but another exhibition of selfishness and pride. 
Christ has set up a far higher standard by his teach- 
ing and example, never known before. . . . His 
passive virtue is not confined to the closing scenes 
of his ministry. As human life is beset at every 
step by trials, vexations, and hinderances, which 
should serve the educational purpose of developing 
its resources and proving its strength, so was Christ's. 
During the ttdiole state of his humiliation he was ' a 



THEIR HISTORIC VERITY. 267 

man of sorrows, and acquainted with grief.' and had 
to endure -the contradictions of sinners." He was 
poor, and suffered hunger and fatigue. He was 
tempted by the devil. His path was obstructed with 
apparently-unsurmountable difficulties from the out- 
set. His words and miracles called forth the bitter 
hatred of the world, which resulted at last in the 
bloody counsel of death. The Pharisees and Sad- 
ducees forgot their jealousies and quarrels in oppos- 
ing him. They rejected and perverted his testimony: 
they laid snares to him by insidious questions ; they 
called him a glutton and wine-bibber for eating and 
drinking like other men. a friend of publicans and 
sinners for his condescending love and mercy, a Sab- 
bath-breaker for doing good on the Sabbath day; 
they charged him with madness and blasphemy for 
asserting his unitv with the Father, and derived 
his miracles from Beelzebub, the prince of devils. 
The common people, though astonished at his wis- 
dom and mighty works, pointed sneeringiy at his 
origin : his own country and native town refused 
him the honor of a prophet. Even his brothers, we 
are told, did not believe in him. and. in their impa- 
tient zeal for a temporal kingdom, they found fault 
with his unostentatious proceeding. His apostles and 
disciples, with all their profound reverence for his 
character, and their faith in his Divine origin and 
mission as the Messiah of God. yet. by their igno- 
rance, their carnal. Jewish notions, and their almost 
habitual misunderstanding of his spiritual discourses, 
must have constituted a severe trial of patience to a 
teacher of far less superiority to his pupils. 

••But how shall we describe his passion, more 
properly so called, with which no other suffering 



268 THE GOSPEL RECORDS : 

can be compared for a moment ! Never did any 
man suffer more innocently, more unjustly, more in- 
tensely than Jesus of Nazareth. Within the narrow- 
limits of a few hours we have here a tragedy of uni- 
versal significance, exhibiting every form of human 
weakness and infernal wickedness, of ingratitude, de- 
sertion, injury, and insult, of bodily and mental pain 
and anguish, culminating in the most ignominious 
death then known among the Jews and Gentiles. 
The Government and the people combined against 
him who came to save them. His own disciples for- 
sook him ; Judas, under the inspiration of the devil, 

betraved him. The rulers of the nation condemned 

1/ 

him, the furious mob cried, 'Crucify him,' and rude 
soldiers mocked him. He was seized in the night, 
hurried from tribunal to tribunal, arrayed in a crown 
of thorns, insulted, smitten, scourged, spit upon and 
hung like a criminal and a slave between two rob- 
bers and murderers ! 

"How did Christ bear all these little and great 
trials of life, and the death on the cross? Let us 
remember first, that, unlike the icy stoics in their 
unnatural and repulsive pseudo-virtue, he showed 
the keenest sensibility in the agony of the garden, 
and the deepest sympathy with human grief in shed- 
ding tears at the grave of a friend, and providing a 
refuge for his mother in the last dying hour. But 
with this truly-human tenderness and delicacy of 
feeling he ever combined an unutterable dignity and 
majesty, a sublime self-control and imperturbable 
calmness of mind. There is a grandeur in his deep- 
est sufferings, which forbids a feeling of pity and 
compassion on our side as incompatible w T ith the 
admiration and reverence for his character. We feel 



THEIR HISTORIC VERITY. 269 

the force of his words to the women of Jerusalem, 



when they bewailed him on the way to Calvary : 
' Weep not for me, but weep for yourselves and your 
children.' We never hear him break out in angry 
passion and violence, although he was at war with 
the whole ungodly world. He never murmured, 
never uttered discontent, displeasure, or resentment. 
He was never disheartened, discouraged, ruffled, or 
fretted, but full of unbounded confidence that all was 
well ordered in the providence of his Heavenly 
Father. He moved serenely, like the sun above the 
clouds as they sailed under him. He was ever sur- 
rounded by the element of peace, and said in his 
parting hour : ' Peace I leave with you ; my peace I 
give unto you; not as the world giveth give I unto 
you. Let not your heart be troubled, neither let it 
be afraid.' He was never what we call unhappy, but 
full of inward joy, which he bequeathed to his disci- 
ples in that sublimest of all prayers, ' that they 
might have his joy fulfilled in themselves.' With 
all his severe rebukes to the Pharisees, he never in- 
dulged in personalities. He ever returned good for 
evil. He forgave Peter for his denial ; and would 
have forgiven Judas, if, in the exercise of sincere re- 
pentance, he had sought his pardon. Even while 
hanging on the cross, he had only the language of 
pity for the wretches who were driving the nails 
into his hands and feet, and prayed in their behalf, 
' Father forgive them, for they know not what they 
do.' He did not seek or hasten his martyrdom in 
morbid enthusiasm or ambitious humility, but qui- 
etly and patiently waited for the hour appointed by 
the will of his Heavenly Father. But when it came, 
with what self-possession and calmness, with what 



270 THE GOSPEL RECORDS : 

strength and meekness, with what majesty and gen- 
tleness did he pass through its dark and trying 
scenes!* Here every word and act are unutterably 
significant, from the agony in Gethsemane, when 
overwhelmed with the sympathetic sense of the en- 
tire guilt of mankind, and in full view of the terrible 

* On this point Dr. Bushnell makes the following profound remarks • " It will 
be observed that his agony, the scene in which his suffering is bitterest and 
most evident, is, on human principles, wholly misplaced. It comes before the 
time, when as yet there is no arrest, and no human prospect that there will be 
any. He is at large to go where he pleases, and in perfect outward safety. His 
disciples have just been gathered round him in a scene of more than family 
tenderness and affection. Indeed, it is but a few days since that he was coming 
into the city, at the head of a vast procession, followed by loud acclamations, 
and attended by such honors as may fitly celebrate the inaugural of a king. 
Yet here, with no bad sign apparent, we see him plunged into a scene of deep- 
est distress, and racked in his feeling with a more than mortal agony. Coming 
out of this, assured and comforted, he is shortly arrested, brought to trial, and 
crucified ; where, if there be any thing questionable in his manner, it is the fact 
that he is even more composed than some would have him to be, not even stoop- 
ing to defend himself or vindicate his innocence By the misplacing 

of his agony thus, and the strange silence he observes when the real hour of 
agony is come, we are put entirely at fault on natural principles. But it was 

not for him to wait He that was before Abraham, must also be 

before his occasions. In a time of safety, in a cool hour of retirement, unac- 
countably to his friends, he falls into a dreadful contest and struggle of mind. 
. . . . Why now this so great intensity of sorrow ? Why this agony ? Was 
there not something unmanly in it, something unworthy of a really-great soul? 
Take him to be only a man, and there probably was. But this one thing is 
clear, that no one of mankind ever had the sensibility to suffer so intensely ; 
even showing the body, for the mere struggle and pain of the mind, exuding and 
dripping with blood. Evidently there is something mysterious here. What, we 
begin to ask, should be the power of a superhuman sensibility? And how far 
should the human vehicle shake under such power? How, too, should an in- 
nocent and pure spirit be exercised, when about to suffer in his own person the 
greatest wrong ever committed ! Besides, there is a vicarious spirit in love ; 
all love inserts itself vicariously into the sufferings, and woes, and, in a certain 
sense, the sins of others, taking them on itself as a burden. How, then, if per- 
chance Jesus should be Divine, an embodiment of God's love in the world— how 
should he feel, and by what signs of feeling manifest his sensibility, when a 
fallen race are just about to do the damning sin that crowns their guilty his- 
tory ; to crucify the only perfect being that ever came into the world ; to crucify 
even him, the messenger and representative to them of the love of God, the de- 
liverer who has taken their case and cause upon him ? Whosoever duly ponders 
these questions, will more and more distinctly see that what he looks upon to 
be the pathology of a superhuman anguish. It stands, he will perceive, in no 
mortal key. It will be to him the anguish, not of any pusillanimous feeling 
but of holy character itself; nay, of a mysteriously-transcendent, or, somehow, 
Divine character." 



THEIR HISTORIC VERITY. 271 

scenes before him — the only guiltless being in the 
world — he prayed that the cup might pass from him, 
but immediately added, 'Not my. but thy will be 
done,' to the triumphant exclamation on the cross, 
1 It is finished!' Even his dignified silence before 
the tribunal of his enemies and the furious mob, 
when, 'as a lamb dumb before his shearers, he opened 
not his mouth,' is more eloquent than any apology, 
and made Pilate tremble. "Who will venture to bring 
a parallel from the annals of ancient or modern 
sages, when even a Eousseau confessed, ' If Socrates 
suffered and died like a philosopher, Jesus Christ 
suffered and died like a God !' The passion and 
crucifixion of Jesus, like his whole character, stands 
without a parallel, solitary and alone in its glory." 

In the portraiture of the character and life of Jesus 
which we have been contemplating, we find all the 
different lineaments which lie scattered up and down 
the pages of the Gospel narrative in the most artless 
simplicity, without any trace of forethought and de- 
sign, gathered together into one whole. It is evident 
that the picture of Jesus which the Gospels present 
to us, and which the apostles every-where describe, 
is such that, even if it had not been expressly stated 
in Scripture that Jesus was without sin, we could 
never have conceived of sin, of separation from God, 
of moral obliquity, as forming a feature in that pic- 
ture, without being sensible that we should thus 
materially disfigure and deface it, nay, destroy it 
altogether. Nevertheless, it has been called in ques- 
tion on the ground that, in order to pronounce con- 
cerning any one that he is absolutely free from sin, a 
perfect knowledge of his heart is above all things 
requisite; and the apostles could not see into the 



272 THE GOSPEL RECORDS: 

heart of Jesus even in the time of their intercourse 
with him, while of the earlier part of his life they 
had no personal knowledge. In meeting this ques- 
tion, Ullman proves the verity of the picture which 
the New Testament presents of the sinlessness of 
Jesus, by the following unanswerable arguments, 
which we will give in his own language, though not 
in the order in which he discusses the subject : 

1. It is unquestionably true that the disciples of 
Jesus could not look immediately into his heart like 
the omniscient Searcher of Hearts ; but what is a 
man's life but the index and revelation of his spirit; 
and is it possible to account for a perfectly-moral life 
otherwise than on the supposition of a perfectly-moral 
soul which it represents? Can we explain purity of 
action otherwise than as flowing from purity of heart? 
"What circumstance is there in the life of Jesus to 
favor the idea that he ever acted in a manner merely 
legal and external, while in heart he was not truly 
good, or that his inmost disposition was in conflict 
with his actions? The principle on which the objec- 
tion is based would, if applied generally, abolish all 
faith in human virtue and spiritual greatness. 

2. If Jesus had not unfolded before the eyes of 
those with whom he was surrounded a character 
of perfect purity and sinless holiness, his apostles 
could not have made a representation of such a char- 
acter; for the idea of sinlessness in a human nature 
had never been thought of previous to the appearing 
of Christ; or, where the thought occurs, we find in- 
separably connected with it the conviction that it 
could not be realized in actual life, that a perfectly- 
sinless human being never did or could exist on 
earth. Plato, it is true, draws a sketch of a right- 



THEIR HISTORIC VERITY. 273 

eous man, in which he represents perfect virtue as 
necessarily conjoined with suffering; but the idea of 
the virtue he describes is entirely restricted to up- 
rightness ; no reference is made to that inward relig- 
iousness by which virtue rises into holiness, and. what 
is a still more important consideration, the sketch of 
Plato is only a conception of his mind, without any 
intimation that it was ever realized in actual life. 
Perhaps there is no man of antiquity with whom 
men would have associated the idea of moral perfec- 
tion more readily than Socrates; and yet, although 
we possess such glorious descriptions of that great 
man, drawn by his revering disciples, neither they 
nor any one else, least of all Socrates himself, have 
ventured to maintain that he was entirely free from 
moral blemishes, a perfect man. The prevalent con- 
viction in the heathen world, that moral perfection 
is a thing which it is impossible for man to attain, is 
clearly expressed by Epictetus, who, after setting 
forth the idea of moral stainlessness with more 
clearness than any preceding philosopher, asks the 
question, whether it be possible that it should ever 
be realized, and answers: "No, it is impossible; all 
that is possible is constantly to strive after a state of 
not sinning." The same sentiment we find in Ju- 
daism ; its ruling princijne was a consciousness of 
sin produced by a law given by a God of holiness ; 
for although the Jew had, along with this conscious- 
ness of sin, also the belief in grace — still he felt him- 
self under the curse of sin, which the law was inca- 
pable of removing. Xeither the founder of the Old 
Testament dispensation laid any claim to the pos- 
session of spotless righteousness, nor that greatest 
prophet of the ante-Christian age, who had, indeed, 



274 THE GOSPEL RECORDS: 

an anticipation that the idea of moral purity would 
be realized, but not till it should be seen in him 
whom he announced. But, behold! here stand the 
plain, simple-minded apostles, themselves reckoned 
neither among the poets nor the philosophers, in 
whom we find only the idea of sinless holiness most 
clearly defined, and whose faith in its actual realiza- 
tion in the person of Jesus has become such a cer- 
tainty that they could sacrifice for its sake all that 
men usually hold dear; further, we find that they 
have given a description of the pure and holy life 
of Jesus, in which the subsequent moral development 
of nineteen centuries has discovered no fault or 
blemish, in which men of the present day still recog- 
nize a picture of the most perfect character in the 
domain of religion and morality that can any where 
be found. From all this we certainly can not draw 
any other conclusion than this : If an idea arose in 
all its clearness in the minds of the apostles, which 
the great thinkers and poets of antiquity w T ere en- 
tirely ignorant of, or saw but dimly, this can be ac- 
counted for only by the manifestation of a real life ; 
and if those who till then had regarded faultless- 
nes-s as a thing unattainable by man, had now the 
strongest belief in the reality of a sinless life, the 
cause for the change could only lie in the overpow- 
ering impression produced by that life itself, seen 
unfolding itself before their eyes. 

3. The testimony of the apostles receives its full 
confirmation and its proper validity from the testi- 
mony of Jesus himself. The two must be taken to- 
gether, for only together do they form a satisfactory 
proof. He, whom others regarded as a spotless and 
holy being, must be fully conscious in himself of per- 



THEIR HISTORIC VERITY. 275 

feet freedom from sin ; and again, this consciousness 
of his must be corroborated by the impression which 
he produces upon others; thus united, alone, can 
either testimony receive its full import. In consider- 
ing the testimony of Jesus concerning himself, let us 
first contemplate its negative aspect. He who had 
so keen an eye for the sins of others must, if we will 
not suppose him to have been self-blinded, have seen 
as clearly sin in himself, if it was there. But we find 
no where in his history, as we do in the case of the 
best of men, even the most occasional expression of 
consciousness of sin ; there is no humbling of himself 
before God on account of sin, there is no prayer for 
the forgiveness of sin. Does not this inevitably lead 
to the conclusion, that the source from whence those 
feelings, which we find precisely in the men of high- 
est moral character, proceed, had in him no existence 
whatever? It follows, likewise, from what he said 
on the occasion of his baptism, that he felt conscious 
that he needed for himself no repentance or regen- 
eration. But more than this. So far was Jesus from 
standing in need of forgiveness for himself, that the 
position he held with reference to sinful men was 
that of a pardoner of sin. He came not only to 
preach forgiveness, he came to bestow it; and could 
this have been done by one who felt guilt and sin in 
himself? To forgive sin belongs to God only; hence, 
Jesus could claim that right only on the ground of a 
deep consciousness of oneness with God, a conscious- 
ness based upon a feeling of perfect freedom from 
sin. 

But the positive testimonies are much stronger. 
Here we have, first of all, to notice that most conclu- 
sive saying of Jesus, which, we find in John's Gospel : 



276 THE GOSPEL RECORDS: 

" Which of you convinceth me of sin ?"* When we 
read this question, the feeling forces itself upon us, 
that its author must have been a personality of a 
moral character most peculiar; a feeling greatly 
strengthened by the recollection that he who spoke 
these words was one who in his whole life presents to 
us a picture at once of purest truthfulness and most 
divine humility. Every man, too, must at once be 
fully convinced, that to apply these words to himself 
would only prove him a vain fool or a miserable 
hypocrite. Last of all could this happen in a com- 
munity from the midst of which we hear that same 
apostle, who has preserved us the saying of Jesus, 
exclaim : " If we say that we have no sin we deceive 
ourselves, and the truth is not in us." It is certainly 
a fact of the highest significance, that, in opposition 
to this attestation of universal sinfulness, which every 



*This passage lias by some commentators been translated: "Which of you 
convinceth me of error?" Supposing this translation were correct, even in 
that case these words of Jesus would be of great importance for our purpose, 
for they would at least contain an indirect testimony to the religious and moral 
purity of Jesus. For if he claims exemption from error in that province which 
alone comes under consideration in this passage — namely, the domain of mo- 
rality and religion — this must imply that he lays claim to purity of inward na- 
ture and of outward conduct. For freedom from sin presupposes freedom from 
error, and vice versa; the two act and react upon each other. The human mind, 
whatever divisions psjxhology may make of its powers, is not in reality sepa- 
rated into different departments. It is absolutely one and undivided, manifest- 
ing itself, however, in various ways, and exerting itself in different directions. 
The threads of our whole intellectual life are so subtilely and finely inter- 
woven, that to touch one is to move the whole ; that every impression affects in 
some way the whole spirit, and every action is the result of the complicated 
cooperation of the most different energies of the mind. The man as thinking 
can not be sundered from the man as feeling ; nor the man as willing from the 
man as knowing. In consequence of this undivided unity of the soul, it is in- 
conceivable that a person should be perfect in regard to volitions and acts, and 
yet be defective and imperfect in moral and religious knowledge. When our 
knowledge has the purity of truth, it acts with a purifying power on the life ; 
and purity of life tends to enlighten, and to preserve the enlightenment of 
the intellect. From this it follows, that the necessary presupposition and re- 
sult of the sinlessness of Jesus was the entire absence of error in respect of 
things religious and moral. 



THEIR HISTORIC VERITY. 277 

one without exception must indorse, there is One 
who steps forth from the ranks of humanity and ex- 
claims : "Who convinceth me of sin?" That Jesus 
by these words did not intend to say of himself 
simply, what any honest man, who led a life in con- 
formity with the law, might say — "Xobody could 
point to any sin he had committed" — is self-evident. 
That he, on the contrary, meant positively to affirm 
the purity of his moral consciousness, that his con- 
science was free from guilt, his inner as well as outer 
life unstained by sin, is irrefutably proved from those 
other sayings which John records of Christ, and 
whose meaning it is impossible to explain away, 
when he declares himself to be the way, the truth, 
and the life ; when he says that it is his meat to do the 
will of Him that sent him ; when he testifies that he 
does at all times the things which please the Father, 
that he never seeks his own will, but always the will 
of the Father. These are expressions which present 
to us the picture of a life which not only had in it 
no place for sin, but, more than this, which can only 
be thought of as an actually-perfect life. There are, 
especially, two significant passages which come under 
consideration here. The first is: "I and my Father 
are one." (John x, 30.) It matters not, for our pur- 
pose, whether the unity spoken of is to be understood 
as a unity of nature, or a moral unity, a unity of 
will ; for where perfect unity with the Divine will 
exists, there must also, of necessity, be not only per- 
fect freedom from sin, but perfect goodness. Similar 
is the case with regard to the other passage: "He 
that has seen me has seen the Father." (John xiv, 
9.) Certainly we are not to restrict these words so 
as to mean merely that there was in Jesus something 



278 THE GOSPEL RECORDS: 

Divine along with what was imperfect and sinful, as 
there is in every man. They must be taken in the 
full sense, that Jesus was morally and mentally an 
image of the invisible God, an expression of the Di- 
vine nature. But it is only a character of stainless 
purity and unsullied holiness that can be a spiritual 
reflection of God ; where sin exists, the Holy One can 
not be seen; where the Holy One can be seen, there 
neither sin nor any imperfection can exist. 

There can, therefore, be no doubt that Jesus bore 
within him the consciousness of being sinless and 
holy ; and that to this consciousness he gave repeated 
expression. If we will not acknowledge the validity 
of a self-testimony of so peculiar a character, there 
remains nothing but to declare Jesus to have been 
either a fanatic or a hypocrite. If we declare him a 
fanatic, we must suppose that he drew no clear line 
of demarkation between good and evil ; that he did 
not examine every fold of his heart, or know all the 
motions of his will ; nay, we must believe that he was 
a victim to the vainest self-decejDtion when he ut- 
tered those memorable words. And is this conceiva- 
ble in the case of one w T ho on every other occasion 
could distinguish with such incomparable precision 
between good and evil, whose keen vision pierced to 
the remotest depths of the nature of men, and whose 
feelings on all moral subjects were so singularly re- 
fined? Is it possible that he who knew others so well 
should have been ignorant of himself? He would 
thus form a strange exception even to human knowl- 
edge. For no other man, even the most darkened, 
would ever entertain a doubt that he is a sinner; was 
Jesus then a sinner, and alone ignorant of the fact? 
Or, if such conclusions are too absurd to be enter- 



THEIR HISTORIC VERITY. 279 

tained, we must be prepared to accept the other more 
fearful alternative. He was conscious of transgress- 
ing against the Divine law, we must suppose, in 
thought, word, and deed, and yet he expressly denied 
it. But who is there that would dare to undertake 
the defense of such a position, to maintain that he, 
who in all the circumstances of his life acted from 
the purest conscientiousness, and who at last died for 
his testimony irpon the cross, was, after all, nothing- 
more than an abject hypocrite? How could it be 
that he, of whom even the least suscej^tible must con- 
fess that there breathed around him an atmosphere 
of purity and faith, should have fallen into an antag- 
onism so deep and so deadly? Into such absurd and 
revolting self-contradictions we must land, if we re- 
fuse to acknowledge the truth of the Divine self- 
testimony of Jesus concerning his sinlessness. 

4. There is still another argument that establishes 
the certainty of the perfect holiness of Jesus beyond 
the possibility of a reasonable doubt. The moral 
effects produced upon mankind by Christianity are 
such that the sinlessness of Jesus is their necessary 
condition or originating cause. In other words, it 
can be shown that there have been, since the appear- 
ance of Christ on earth, actual manifestations, which 
can be explained rationally only on one assumption ; 
namely, that the Author of Christianity was a being 
of sinless holiness ; and that, if we refuse to make 
this assumption, these manifestations must remain 
entirely inexplicable. 

An unbiased investigation will place beyond a 
doubt the following facts : that Christianity produced 
in individual believers — that is, in those who were 
deservedly so called — a rich supply of virtues ; and 



280 THE GOSPEL RECORDS: 

that these were, partly, virtues of which men had 
previously no conception whatever, or, at all events, 
no idea, so high and pure as Christianity imparts. 
Such virtues are humility, meekness, and the self-de- 
nial of compassionate love. Nor has Christianity 
exercised a less salutary moral influence upon the 
common relations of human life. In marriage and 
the family, in the condition of civil and political life, 
in the relation of ranks, castes, and nations to one 
another, and, in a word, in the whole condition of the 
race, it has laid the foundation of a state of society 
essentially different from what it was before. AH 
these moral manifestations disclose to us the grand 
truth, that Christianity has produced something new 
in the moral world, that the individual character 
which is molded by its influence, and also the hu- 
manity which it forms, is a new moral creation. This 
the apostle Paul expresses in a most forcible manner, 
when he says: "If any man be in Christ, he is a 
new creature; old things are passed away, behold, 
all things are become new." Let us now inquire 
what must be the originating cause of that new cre- 
ation which we find in the moral life of the Christian 
world. In seeking an answer to this question, we 
will naturally be inclined to point first to the moral 
ideas peculiar to Christianity — that is, to Christian 
ethics. Christianity has, undoubtedly, an ethical sys- 
tem of incomparable purity, depth, and completeness; 
it far transcends every thing that the heathen world 
has to point to ; its principle and spirit far excel the 
loftiest ideas of the Old Testament economy, and 
there can be no doubt that this of itself is a fact of 
great importance for our purpose. For these ideas 
of Christian ethics are the expression and result of 



THEIR HISTORIC VERITY. 281 

the moral spirit which existed in the Founder of 
Christianity, and thus they afford a testimony to the 
purity and dignity of his moral teaching. But if we 
are thus compelled to argue from the doctrine to its 
Author, this is still more the case when we look be- 
yond the doctrine to the original source of those in- 
fluences which have produced so mighty a revolution 
in the moral world. And this primary source is not 
the doctrine of Jesus, but his person. This is neces- 
sarily the case; for it is not any doctrine which calls 
into being a new life ; it is only life which can gen- 
erate life. For this we have the most decisive testi- 
mony of Christian exj>erience. The same apostle 
who uttered the sublime saying concerning the new 
creation, says, also, when he wishes to describe the 
primary source and fountain of his life: "I live; but 
not I, but Christ liveth in me." He affirms that any 
one is a new creature, not because he walks accord- 
ing to the doctrine of Christ, but because he is "in" 
Christ — that is, personally united to him ; and in this 
the apostle expresses only what is the experience of 
every true Christian in every age. 

The question now arises : In what way must such 
a personality have been constituted to make it ca- 
pable of imparting a regenerating power to Paul, and 
to all those whose experience has been like his? 
And to this question we must answer : It can not 
have been a personality in itself sinful, for then it 
would have differed from other men only in degree. 
It would still have partaken of the old nature. It 
would not have realized in itself an entirely new cre- 
ation ; and thus it could not have prepared the way 
for a new moral birth. On the contrary, it must 

have been a personality raised above all connection 

24 



282 THE GOSPEL RECORDS : 

with the old nature ; one in which the power of sin 
was entirely broken ; which was itself in the highest 
sense a new creation, and was thus in a condition to 
produce the deep renovating effects which a perfect 
ideal alone could produce.* Thus, on the supposition 
that the Founder of Christianity was not without 
sin, it is impossible to understand how a morality of 
so pure and perfect a stamp as that which character- 
izes our religion could derive its origin from such a 
being, or how it could express its peculiar character 
in such words as these : " Old things are passed away, 
all things are become new." If, on the other hand, 
we suppose the Author of Christianity to have been 
altogether without sin, then it is easy to perceive 
how, within its sphere, a new creation could come to 
perfection in the moral world by his being formed 
within the individual believer. 

Again, if the Christian feels in his inmost soul a 
consciousness that morally he is a new man, that old 
things are passed away and that all things are be- 
come new, then his position with reference to God must 
have been changed. The dominion of sin can not be 
broken, and the power of a new life can not be at- 
tained, unless its guilt has been first abolished, and 
the foundation laid of a right standing in relation to 
the holy God. Now, the w T ords which express all that 

*In reply to the objection, that the sinlessness of Jesus should have pro- 
duced also in those who come within his renovating influence a perfect free- 
dom from transgression, Ullmann observes : " We find that, in all true Chris- 
tians, the principle of sin is in fact broken, and that they feel assured of its 
complete and final overthrow. If, in spite of this conquest of the principle of 
sin, it is still found operating in their lives, this circumstance only leads us to 
conclude that, in order to be ever more and more and at length perfectly freed 
from sin, all that is required is a complete surrender to the renovating in- 
fluence of Christ; a conviction which can rest upon nothing else than a cer- 
tainty of the fullness and boundless efficacy of that holy, sinless life which 
dwells in the person of Jesus." 



THEIR HISTORIC VERITY. 283 

belongs to this circle of ideas are these two : Recon- 
ciliation and Redemption. These two things constitute 
the fundamental consciousness of the Christian world; 
for the Christian world is w T hat it is essentially be- 
cause it is conscious of being reconciled and redeemed. 
Now, if we find this consciousness in the Christian 
religion alone, if Christianity is the only religion 
which can effect a true reconciliation between man 
and God by an actual redemption from sin, then it 
is not difficult to discover that the author of such a 
religion must himself be of a perfectly-sinless and 
holy character. The true relation of man to God 
can find its realization only in one in whom sin, 
which is the ground of separation between man and 
God, has no place. The real manifestation of Divine 
grace can exist only in one in whom the one spring 
of action is the fullness of love which he derives 
from perfect fellowship with God, and in whom this 
forms the principle which regulates his whole life. 
"Were there not at the head of the Christian religion 
such a being, it were inconceivable how it could be 
the religion of reconciliation and redemption, or how 
the deep-rooted consciousness of being reconciled and 
redeemed should have come to form the fundamental 
belief of the Christian world. With such a being 
at the head of Christianity, this is at once explained. 
Now, if the consciousness of being reconciled and re- 
deemed, possessed by the Christian world, has any 
reality, then that from which it emanated must also 
have had a real existence. And that that conscious- 
ness had a real foundation rests equally upon an 
actual fact — on a fact which every Christian practi- 
cally experiences. The doctrine of the sinless holi- 
ness of Jesus is, therefore, as secure as is the truth 



284 THE GOSPEL RECORDS : 

of the efficacy of his work of reconciliation and re- 
demption. 

One point more remains to be noticed. Not only 
have morality and religion been both presented undei 
a new aspect by Christianity, but it has effected an 
interpenetration of the moral and religious elements 
such as formerly did not exist. This blending of the 
moral and religious, which we call holiness, can only 
be accounted for, that it was fully realized in the 
person of Christ. It is Christianity alone which com- 
bines religion and morality into one, though giving 
each its full due ; for it knows nothing of a piety 
which does not sanctify, which is not of an entirely 
ethical character, seeking to subdue and transfuse the 
whole life ; or of a morality which does not rest 
upon a living faith, which is not thoroughly religious. 
This union gives, as has been remarked above, the 
idea of holiness. But it is something more than the 
idea that Christianity gives ; it sets forth holiness 
not as something unattainable, far beyond the grasp 
of humanity, but as already really implanted in hu- 
manity — as an idea which, from the time of its first 
perfect manifestation in the person of its Founder, is 
destined to be realized ever more and more within 
the Christian Church. It is self-evident that the idea 
of holiness and the belief of its attainability by man 
could not proceed from any thing else than from the 
great fact of the life manifestation of the sinless and 
perfect character of Jesus. 

5. When we endeavor to bring before our minds 
the image of the personality of Jesus in direct con- 
nection with the influences and works which orig- 
inated in him, three things strike us as peculiar — 
unlimited perfection, unapproachable dignity, and 



THEIR HISTORIC VERITY. 285 

unconditional power of action. The character of 
Jesus is so constituted that we can not take away 
one single trait from it, or add one to it, without at 
once being sensible that we have not only altered but 
disfigured it. He includes in himself, in fact, all per- 
fection ; and, along with the highest energy, and an 
inexhaustible fountain of life, there is a harmony so 
perfect that we are compelled to exclaim : Here no 
improvement can be suggested by the loftiest ideal- 
izing, for the ideal itself has become real, and the 
life itself is stamped with the seal of perfection ! In 
its perfection we feel, moreover, that something at- 
taches to the person of Jesus which our thoughts and 
words are incapable of grasping. Art has striven in 
vain to find an adequate expression for the image of 
Christ; and so, to describe his spiritual nature and 
character, is a task which never has been, and never 
will be, accomplished to our complete satisfaction. 
We feel ever that he is possessed of a dignity which 
is unapproachable by man, of a fullness which, the 
more we draw from it, the greater do its treasures ap- 
pear. This is perceived not only by separate individ- 
uals, but by humanity as a whole. The higher and 
truer the inner life of an individual becomes, the 
more clearly does he discern and realize the image 
of Jesus ; and at every new step in the development 
of humanity the form of the Xazarene is illuminated 
by a fuller light. At the same time there is a dis- 
tinct consciousness that it is not the image of Christ 
which increases by means of us, but that we, by 
living more deeply into it, grow in our capacity of 
understanding it. And however nearly we may ap- 
proximate toward him, we always feel that he towers 
above us at a hight to which no man will ever be 



286 THE GOSPEL RECORDS: 

able fully to rise — that there is a distance between 
him and us which none can traverse. This eminence 
of Jesus is further evidenced by the unbounded power 
of influencing men which he manifests. The image 
of the serene and holy One of Golgotha sinks into 
the very depths of our heart, and presents itself be- 
fore the soul — sometimes as a conscience warning us 
of sin and evil, at other times like a word of conso- 
lation coming directly from our compassionate God. 
And while its influence is thus felt in our own in- 
most life, it is no less perceptible in the ordinary 
course of the history of mankind. The traces there 
are alike notorious and indelible, and the whole de- 
velopment of humanity, especially in its highest as- 
pects, would be inexplicable apart from the recogni- 
tion of the presence of such a power. We can con- 
ceive it to be possible that all the great men of history 
should pass into utter oblivion, but we must hold it 
to be impossible that the memory of this image 
should depart, because it has become part and parcel 
of the inmost and truest life of humanity. Nothing 
like this can be affirmed of any other man. The ca- 
pacity and perfection of all others are conjoined with 
limitation and sinfulness ; eminence in every other 
instance is explicable on human grounds, and can be 
represented in human forms; all other influence on 
humanity, even that which deserves to be called 
world-wide, has its limits. The only exception is 
Jesus, the sinlessly-holy One. 

The question now arises, whether the explanation 
of this phenomenon can be found within the sphere 
of that which is merely human ; or whether it does 
compel us to recognize in Jesus a principle which 
lies beyond human nature and human powers? We, 



THEIR HISTORIC VERITY. 287 

surely, can have no hesitation in denying the former 
and affirming the latter. If sinlessness or moral per- 
fection were within the reach of man in his present 
condition, how has it come to pass that experience 
only furnishes one example of perfect freedom from 
sin? TThy have not persons risen up among men, 
from time to time, who could lay claim to the same 
superiority, and compel others to acknowledge the 
justice of their pretensions? The only rational 
ground of the fact is, that a principle of sin is im- 
planted in human nature — not, indeed, \>y original 
constitution* but certainly, in its present state, that 
sin, although not the true, is still the second nature 
of man — that it penetrates and rules the whole race. 
The principle of sin being in such a manner ingrafted 
in human nature, in the condition in which experi- 
ence presents it to us, only one supposition can ren- 
der intelligible the existence of a sinless man; namely, 
that the chain of sin has been broken, and that, in 
consequence, a personality has arisen in the midst of 
the sinful race, whose nature is thoroughly whole 
and sound, to which have been given powers per- 
fectly pure and amply sufficient for the realization 
of the hihger life. But this is only possible as the 
result of a Divine creation. Such a person could not 
be the product of a race subjected to sin. In this 
aspect he, in whom the possibility of being sinless 



* "Xever was there a man so pdrely man as the second Adam, the Lord from 
heaven. Xever man spoke so humanly, felt so humanly, loved so humanly, 
lived so humanly, died so humanly. Bone of our bone, and flesh of our flesh, 
he had a more genuine humanity than any of the other sons of Adam, inas- 
much as it was free from that demoniac adulteration which had been produced 
by sin. Hence he is so emphatically called, and delights to call himself, the 
Son of man. The term has more meaning than it seems at first view to possess. 
In the Syriac it is the name for humanity itself." {Taylor Lewis's " The Divine 
Human of the Scriptures," p. 6.) 



288 THE GOSPEL RECORDS I 

has become a reality, must be considered a totally 
new man, a second Adam. But this second Adam, 
with whose humanity begins a new career, although 
like the first as respects the soundness and integrity 
of the higher powers of life, stands in an entirely- 
different position toward the world. The first man 
was put in a world where as yet sin was not, and he 
had only to decide for obedience or disobedience to 
the plain Divine command which had been given 
him. The second Adam was born as a child into a 
world which was already under the dominion of sin, 
and, through all the stages of the development of his 
life, was exposed to its influence. In the course of such 
a development, independently of any natural bias in 
a man, sin comes upon him from all sides ; it takes 
possession of him when he is as yet in an unconscious, 
or only half-conscious state ; and when he awakens 
up to full consciousness it is already in the field, 
and has gained a power with which he has to strug- 
gle, not only outwardly but inwardly. Hence the 
impossibility of conceiving of a development, actually 
free from sin, being accomplished in a natural way 
under existing circumstances. But if, as we have 
found in Jesus, such a development has, notwith- 
standing all influences to the contrary, been brought 
to pass, we can not feel any hesitation in assuming 
the presence of something over and above, and in 
union with, the integrity of constitution originally 
given. In him whose development was thus sinless, 
there must have been an infallible sureness enabling 
him during its whole course, and even at those stages 
of it when he was not as yet awakened to full con- 
sciousness, to reject every thing impure, untrue, and 
sinful, and to appropriate for his inner life only the 



THEIR HISTORIC VERITY. 289 

pure, true, and good, from that which the surround- 
ing world presented to him. It must therefore be 
conceded that a Divine principle conditioned the 
original integrity of Jesus, and was a constituent 
element of his personality, and that it grew and 
progressed in perfect symmetry and in harmony with 
the human element; and that, consequently, so far 
from hindering, it really promoted the natural devel- 
opment of the latter, and secured its perfect purity 
and orderliness. Clearly, however, we can not un- 
derstand by this Divine principle merely something 
akin or bearing resemblance to God, such as is in 
every man ; for sin can and actually does coexist 
therewith in every man, while the sinlessness of Je- 
sus separates him from, and constitutes him superior 
to, all other men. "We must, therefore, consider that 
principle to be Divine in its uncorrupted and true 
essence. In this way ice are led from the sinless Son 
of man to the Son of God, and the recognition of the 
pure humanity of Jesus ends in the conviction of his 
true Divinity. His personality is so constituted that, 
as we attentively regard it, we find it marked by 
those very characteristics of truth, righteousness, ho- 
liness, and love, which constitute the essential nature 
of God. Our thoughts, therefore, unavoidably ascend 
to God. We are utterly unable to understand or ac- 
count for his personality otherwise. The conviction 
is forced upon us that, so far as it is possible to see 
God in human form, we have him before us in the 
person of Jesus. And, inasmuch as Jesus presents 
humanity and Divinity in complete union and inter- 
pretation, we can not conceive of him otherwise than 
as God-man. 

25 



290 THE GOSPEL RECORDS 



§ 30. The Miracles wrought on and performed by Jesus 
the Natural and Necessary Outflow of his Histor- 
ically-proved Personality, and, at the same 
time, the Ground and Warrant of all 
other True Miracles, preceding 
and succeeding his appear- 
ANCE on Earth. 

We take it for granted that the miracles of the 
Gospel history are meant to be real miracles, accord- 
ing to the definition which we have given of a mira- 
cle in § 22. All attempts to explain them away, by 
putting language to the rack, or by resolving them 
into effects from natural causes, have so utterly 
failed, that those who made such attempts are ridi- 
culed by infidelity itself. Again, the testimony of so 
credible men as the Evangelists, (see §§ 24, 25, 26,) 
may be considered sufficient to satisfy a reasonable 
inquiry after the verity of the miracles they record, 
more especially when we take into consideration 
that, according to their testimony, Christ himself 
claimed the power to work miracles, and appealed to 
it as a proof of his Divine mission ; for the supposi- 
tion that Jesus should have given a false testimony 
concerning himself, we have seen to be utterly incon- 
ceivable ; and if the testimony of the Evangelists on 
this point were false, if the miracles they attribute 
to Jesus were mere fables, the product of their age, 
the question arises, how was it possible for them to 
preserve such a character as that of Christ in its 
perfect proportions? "If there be a greater mira- 
cle," observes Bushnell, "or a tax on human credu- 
lity more severe, we know not where it is. Nothing 
is so difficult, all human literature testifies, as to draw 



THEIR HISTORIC VERITY. 291 

a character, and keep it in its living proportions. 
How much more to draw a perfect character, and not 
discolor it fatally by marks from the imperfection of 
the biographer ! How is it. then, that four humble 
men have done this, while loading down the history 
of Christ with marvels and fables?" 

The verity of the Gospel miracles, however, as we 
remarked in the introduction to this chapter, rests 
not simply nor chiefly on the credibility of the Evan- 
gelists. It is the moral perfection of Jesus, unparal- 
leled and never having been conceived of by man 
before, that furnishes the unassailable voucher of his 
having performed miracles. Very boldly, but truly, 
Bushnell remarks : " It is no ingenious fetches of ar- 
gument that we want ; no external testimony, gath- 
ered here and there from the records of past ages, 
suffices to end our doubts ; but it is the new sense 
opened in us by Jesus himself — a sense deeper than 
words and more immediate than inference — of the 
miraculous grandeur of his life — a glorious agree- 
ment felt between his works and his person, such 
that his miracles themselves are proved to us in our 
feeling, believed in by that inward testimony. On 
this inward testimony we are willing to stake every 
thing, even the life that now is, and that which is to 
come. If the miracles, if revelation itself can not 
stand upon the superhuman character of Jesus, then 
let it fall. If that character does not contain all 
truth and centralize all truth in itself, then let there 
be no truth. If there is anv thins: worthy of belief 
not found in this, we may well consent to live and 
die without it. Before this sovereign light, stream- 
ing out from God, the deep questions, and dark sur- 
mises, and doubts unresolved, which make a night so 



292 THE GOSPEL RECORDS: 

gloomy and terrible about us, hurry away to their 
native abyss. God, who commanded the light to 
shine out of darkness, has shined in our hearts, to 
give the light of the knowledge of the glory of God 
in the face of Jesus Christ. This it is that has con- 
quered the assaults of doubt and false learning in all 
past ages, and will in all ages to come. No argu- 
ment against the sun will drive it from the sky. No 
mole-eyed skepticism, dazzled by its brightness, can 
turn away the shining it refuses to look upon. And 
they who long after God will be ever turning their 
eyes thitherward, and, either with or without reason, 
or, if need be, against manifold impediments of rea- 
son, will see and believe." 

We have shown, by a full and critical examination 
of the character of Jesus, that it can not have been 
an invention, but that such a person must have lived, 
else he could not be described, and that he plainly 
was not a mere man. This historically-proved per- 
son — a being who has broken into the world, and is 
not of it, but has come out from God — is himself the 
one central and grandest miracle that occurred in the 
history of the world, the ground and warrant for all 
other true miracles, preceding and succeeding his 
appearance on earth, and all the miracles, wrought 
on and performed by him, are only the natural out- 
flow of that which is already contained in his per- 
sonality. They are of the same significance in re- 
spect of the natural powers as sinlessness is in respect 
of the moral powers. A perfectly-sinless man is no 
whit less miraculous a phenomenon in the moral 
world than a man raised from the dead is in the 
natural world. To recognize Jesus as sinlessly holy, 
and yet to deny the miraculous element in his life, 



THEIR HISTORIC VERITY. 293 

would be self-contradictory. It is inconceivable that 
he should have entered or left the world like other 
men. Sinful humanity could not produce out of itself 
the Son of Man, whom to see was to see God the 
Father, and the historical development of his earthly 
life would have had no fitting completion, if he had 
not risen from the dead and ascended to heaven. 
His supernatural conception, his resurrection and as- 
cension can be called in question only by one who 
attempts to blot from the record of history the 
earthly life and character of Jesus, the words spoken 
and the influences on the minds of men exercised by 
him. Whoever admits these irrefutable facts of his- 
tory, must expect supernatural works to proceed 
from this supernatural personality. The contrary 
would be unnatural. " Since Jesus is shown," says 
Bushnell, "to be a superhuman being, manifestly 
Nature will have a relation to him under and by 
her own laws, such as accords with his superhuman 
quality, and it would be very singular if he did not 
do superhuman things; nay, it is even philosophic- 
ally incredible that he should not ^ a y> 

it would be itself a contradiction to all order and fit 
relation if he could not. To suppose that a being 
out of humanity will be shut up within all the lim- 
itations of humanity, is incredible and contrary to 
reason. The very laws of nature themselves, having 
him present to them as a new agent and higher first 
term, would require the development of new conse- 
quences and incidents in the nature of wonders. 
Being a miracle himself it would be the greatest of 
all miracles if he did not work miracles." 

Another highly-gifted American writer of our day, 
Tayler Lewis, in his " The Divine Human in the 



294 THE GOSPEL RECORDS: 

Scriptures," says to the same purpose: "In the 
Bible even the supernatural — we may say it with- 
out a paradox — is most natural. It is in such true 
keeping with the times, with the events and doc- 
trines it attests, with all the surrounding historical 
circumstances as they are narrated, that we almost 
lose the feeling of the supernatural in the admirable 
harmony and consistency of the ideas and scenes 
presented. It seems to be just what might have been 
expected ; it would be strange that it should be oth- 
erwise ; the marvelous here is the presumptive, the 
extraordinary becomes the easy of belief." After 
illustrating this thought by every part of the Old 
Testament, where the supernatural appears, he con- 
tinues :* " But it is in the history of Christ that the 
idea on which we are dwelling receives its most pow- 
erful verification. A life so unearthly, so heavenly, 
so spiritual, so transcending nature, so full of a Di- 
vine power manifesting itself in every word and act, 
so spent in nights of prayer, and days of sublimest 
teachings — how out of all keeping does it seem, that 
to a state so earth-transcending in its spirituality, 
there should be no corresponding witness of the su- 
pernatural ! . . . . There is a demand for its 
presence, as not only a fitting but an indispensable 
accompaniment. The idea can not be complete with- 
out it. Such power over the soul ! it must extend to 
the body and the physical life ; absence of this heal- 
ing energy would have been the difficulty to be ex- 
plained, the feature in the narrative not easy of belief. 
Such a life and such a death ! the resurrection is the 
only appropriate sequence of a career on earth, yet 

* We quote, leaving out all that would interrupt our argument or woaken its 
force. 



THEIR HISTORIC VERITY. 295 

so unearthly ; the ascension into heaven is the only 
appropriate finale to a drama so heavenly and di- 
vine. — The serious reader can not help feeling that in 
the life of Christ, as given to us by the Evangelists, 
there is something more than a supernatural gift, or 
the occasional power of working miracles, as some- 
thing imparted from -without, or only exercised by 
himself through special effort in each particular case. 
"We are impressed, rather, with the idea of the con- 
stant supernatural, as a vailed power, not so much 
requiring an effort for its manifestation as a restraint 
to prevent it beaming forth before unholy eyes that 
could not bear, or might profane the sight. In that 
earthly tabernacle there was the constant dwelling 
of the Shekinah, more powerfully present when alone, 
perhaps, or with a few chosen ones. . . . 'Thou 
art the Christ, the Son of the living God,' is an ex- 
clamation called out more by the overpowering effect 
of this constant presence, than by any great public 
displays of miraculous power. It is this, more than 
any thing else, that is attested b}" the holy apostle 
John in the words : ' That which was from the begin- 
ning, which we have heard, which we have seen with 
our eyes, which our hands have handled of the TVord 
of Life, for the Life was manifested and we saw it, 
and we testify, and tell unto you of that eternal life, 
which was with the Father and was manifested unto 
us.' The reference is not so much to striking out- 
ward displays as to the constant spiritual effulgence 
ever beaming on the soul of the spiritual disciple, 
and sometimes, even to the eye of sense, surrounding 
the person of Christ with an outward glory. From 
the inward supernatural, as from a never-intermit- 
ting fountain, proceeded the outward miracle-work- 



296 THE GOSPEL RECORDS : 

ing power, as exhibited in distinct acts 

Thus, too, are we told of a constant virtue dwelling 
in the Savior's person ; as in the story of the woman 
who 'touched the hem of his garment that she might 
be healed.' Her spiritual state, that is, her pure 
faith, brought her in a living relation to this power 
so vailed to the unbelieving or merely curious mul- 
titude; and the Savior sanctions her thought when 
he says: 'I know that power has gone forth from 
me.' .... It is credible, it is even to be ex- 
pected that the supernatural should shine out through 
a natural so elevated above the ordinary condition of 
humanity. There is a deep mystery even in our 
common physical energy. The strength of the body 
is, in its ultimate resolution, a power of the quiescent 
spirit. Activity, force, yea, even in some sense, motus 
or outgoing energy are attributes of soul, even when at 
rest, as much as thought, or will, or emotion. The 
present bodily organization, instead of a necessary 
aid, may be, in fact, a limiting, a restraint upon a 
tremendous power, that needs to be confined as long 
as it is joined to a selfish or unholy will, even as we 
chain the madman in his cell. Sometimes, even in 
common life, there are fearful exhibitions of the 
loosening of these material bonds. In the last stages 
of bodily weakness, apjmrently, some delirium of the 
soul, if we may call it such, brings out a power of 
nerve and muscle irresistible to any ordinary strength, 
inexplicable to any ordinary physiological knowledge. 
The cases, indeed, are vastly different, and yet there 
is some analogy. Such views of the common organ- 
ism do not at all account for the higher j)ower that 
may dwell in a perfectly holy spirituality; but they 
render it credible ; they prepare us to believe in it, 



THEIR HISTORIC VERITY. 297 

yea, to feel it as a spiritual dissonance if there be 
wholly lacking some high command of nature, in 
connection with a perfect faith and holy will ever in 
harmony with the divine. It is the Scriptures, how- 
ever, that must furnish our only reliable ground of 
argument on this mysterious subject; and here we 
find no small proof of such a constant indwelling 
glory of the supernatural as distinguished from an oc- 
casional miraculous gift. In certain passages there is 
the strongest expression of Christ's unwillingness to 
gratify curiosity by the display of an outward sign ; 
in others there is shown an evident reluctance to 
have this holy influence the subject of any profane 
or gossiping rumor. But again, he exhibits it of his 
own accord to chosen disciples, and then it has the 
appearance of a manifestation, to favored souls, of a 
power and a spiritual glory ever more truly present 
in his retired than in his public life. Such is the 
impression left upon the mind by the account of the 

transfiguration Something, too, of the 

same feeling comes over us as we read the account of 
Christ walking on the waters. . . . Why walking 
thus at that deep time of night over the wild and 
lonely waves? It was not needed, in addition to his 
other miracles, for the confirming of the disciples' 
faith. It seems, rather, the unearthly act of one 
filled with unearthly thoughts, and seeking a corre- 
spondence to them in the more unearthly, or, as we 
might even call them, supernatural aspects of the 
natural world. If the answer can not well be given 
in any thing out of himself, why should we fear to 
say that it was a rapt physical state, in harmony 
with an elevated spiritual frame, that demanded it as 
its fitting outward action ? The ecstasy of the soul 



298 THE GOSPEL RECORDS: 

lifts up the body. There is something of this in the 
mere earthly human experience. There is a spiritual 
condition that seems comparatively, if not absolutely, 
to loosen the power of gravity, to set volition free, 
and release even the flesh from the hold of earthly 
bonds. How much more of this ethereal soaring 
must there have been in the ecstasies of Jesus ? In 
the human spiritual power, as known to us, there is, 
indeed, nothing that can be strictly compared with 
it; and yet there is enough to render credible such 
an absolute triumph over matter in the case of one 
so holy and so heavenly as Christ. .... We 
think there is no irreverence in such thoughts. At 
all events, without any special reasoning about spir- 
itual and physical conditions, there is in Scripture 
itself good evidence that the human nature in Christ 
was ever in connection with the supernatural, and 
that the special miraculous acts were unvailings 
of a constant hidden power, rather than special en- 
ablings or special efforts in each particular case. 
Christ's own words convey this thought: 'He is the 
resurrection and the life.' Even when vailed in hu- 
man flesh, he is still the brightness of the Father, 
the express image of his hypostasis. 'We beheld his 
glory,' says John, 'the glory of the Only-Begotten, 
full of grace and truth.' The humanity, too, is a 
true humanity; no one was ever more perfectly hu- 
man ; and yet so wondrous is he, even in his man- 
hood, that it forces the idea of the superhuman and 
the supernatural as not only the casual explanation 
of such an existence, but its own fitting, yea, neces- 
sary accompaniment." 

While we have, as we think, presented sufficient 
grounds in support of our proposition, that all the 



THEIR HISTORIC VERITY. 299 

miracles wrought on and performed by Christ were 
the natural and necessary outflow of that which is 
implied in his historically-proved personality — that 
is, that we can not, as we are compelled to do, recog- 
nize Jesus as sinlessly holy, and yet consistently deny 
the miraculous element in his life — we are, of course, 
far from permitting the unauthorized inference, that 
the exercise of miraculous powers necessarily involves 
or depends upon sinlessness on the part of every 
person possessed of miraculous powers. We have, on 
the contrary, referred to the fact that, while with 
all other persons to whom the Sci^tures ascribe the 
performance of miracles, it is represented as a super- 
natural gift, as a power imparted from without, and 
exercised only occasionally through a special effort, 
the personality of Christ is the only one that stood 
in such constant connection with the supernatural; 
that the special miraculous acts performed by him 
or wrought on him were only the unvailings of a 
constant hidden power, requiring not so much an 
effort for its manifestation as a restraint to prevent 
its beaming forth before unholy eyes. The relation, 
therefore, which we have discovered between the sin- 
lessness of Jesus and the miracles ascribed to him, 
admits of no application to other men who wrought 
miracles, except in so far as, wherever the miracu- 
lous element appears in the Holy Scriptures, it ap- 
pears, in the popular sense of the word, natural, that 
is, " in such true keeping with the times and occa- 
sions by which it is called forth, and in such admira- 
ble harmony with the events and doctrines which it 
attests, that we almost lose the feeling of the super- 
natural." But not only this, we have remarked 
above that Christ himself, being the one central and 



300 THE GOSPEL RECORDS: 

grandest miracle that occurred in the history of the 
world, is at the same time the ground and warrant for 
all other true miracles, preceding and succeeding his ap- 
pearance on earth. 

This is a truth which is too much overlooked in 
the discussion of miracles. In section 22 we showed 
that miracles are not a disruption of the divinely- 
established order of the world, but a demonstration 
of Divine agency for the purpose of restoring the 
order of the world, which had been disordered by 
sin, the act of created free agents. Had there not 
taken place a disorder of the world by sin, there 
would, indeed, seem to be no demand or even place 
for that especial Divine agency which we call miracu- 
lous. This miraculous agency of God culminated in 
the incarnation of his Son, the Eedeemer from sin, 
and it is self-evident that he, being the greatest mir- 
acle himself, should work miracles. But it is equally 
evident why Divine Wisdom did not see fit to con- 
fine to his person the manifestation of the miracu- 
lous agency necessary for the restoration of the moral 
order of the world. Mankind was to be prepared 
for the reception of the greatest miracles by the less. 
The history of the nation in which the Son of God 
should be born, especially the bringing the people of 
Israel out of the bondage of Egypt, and constituting 
the covenant people of God, bore, therefore, the 
stamp of the immediate operation of God ; the Di- 
vine messengers, especially the great legislator and 
mediator of the first covenant, Moses, needed the 
authentication by miracles, and the spirit of proph- 
ecy, the continuous and most irrefutable miracle of 
the Old Testament, had, with the types and the 
shadows of the law, to point out the coming Messiah. 



THEIR HISTORIC VERITY. 301 

Nor was it proper that the manifestation of super- 
natural power, preparing for and culminating in the 
appearance of the Son of God in the flesh, should at 
once terminate with his ascension to heaven ; for, in 
this case, men would have been still more slow, than 
they are, to believe that the greatest of all miracles 
had taken place. The apostles, preaching Jesus and 
the resurrection, needed God to bear them witness 
with signs and wonders and with divers miracles 
and gifts of the Holy Ghost, and we have credible 
testimony that the power of working miracles con- 
tinued with the Church, to some extent, during sev- 
eral centuries.* 

A consideration of the peculiar nature, significance, 
importance, and design of the miracles performed by 
Christ does not properly fall within the scope of our 
present investigation. We have considered the mira- 

* In connection with these remarks it is proper to consider the question : 
Whether miracles are now discontinued; and, if so, why? This question we 
know not how to answer better than Dr. Bushnell has done: " The Scriptures 
no where teach, what is often assumed, the final discontinuance of miracles ; 
and it is much to he regretted that such an assumption is so commonly made. 
There is no certain proof that miracles have not been wrought in every age of 
the Christian Church. There is certainly a supernatural and Divine causality 
streaming into the lives and blending with the faith of all good men, and 
there is no reason to doubt that it may sometimes issue in premonitions, re- 
sults of guidance and healing, endowments of force, answers to prayer that 
closely approach in many cases, if they do not exactly meet, our definition of 
miracles. Again, if miracles have been discontinued, even for a thousand 
years, they may yet be revived in such varieties of form as a different age may 
require. They will be revived without fail whenever the ancient reason may 
return, or any new contingency may occur, demanding their instrumentality. 
And yet good and sufficient reasons may be given why the more palpable 
miracles of the apostolic age could not be continued, or must needs be inter- 
spaced by agencies of a more silent character. It may have been that they 
would by and by corrupt the impressions and ideas even of religion, setting 
men to look after signs and prodigies with their eyes, and so, instead of at- 
testing God to them, making them unspiritual and even incapable of faith. 
Traces of this mischief begin to appear even in the times of the apostles them- 
selves. Christianity, it is very obvious, inaugurates the faith of a supernatural 
agency in the world. Hence, to inaugurate such a faith, it must needs make 
its entry into the world through the fact of a Divine incarnation and other 
miracles. In these we have the pole of thought, opposite to nature, set before 



302 THE GOSPEL RECORDS : 

cles of Christ in these practical aspects in our Com- 
mentary, in the introductory remarks to the eighth 
chapter of Matthew, where we meet the first record 
of a Gospel miracle. How we can distinguish true, 
Divine miracles from false ones, wrought by diabolic 
agency, we have discussed in our comment on Mat- 
thew vii, 22. 

us in distinct exhibition. And then the problem is, having the two poles of 
nature and the supernatural presented, that we be trained to apprehend them 
conjunctively, or as working together in silent terms of order. For, if the 
miracles continue in their palpable and staring form of wonders, and take their 
footing as a permanent institution, they will breed a sensuous, desultory state 
of mind, opposite to all sobriety and all genuine intelligence. At a certain 
point the miracles were needed as the polar signs of a new force — but, for the 
reason suggested, it appears to be necessary, also, that they should not be con- 
tinuous; otherwise, the supernatural will never be brought into any terms of 
order, as a force conjoined with nature in our common experience, but will 
only instigate a wild, eccentric temper, closely akin to unreason, and to all 
practical delusions. And yet there may be times, even to the end of the world, 
when some outburst of the miraculous force of God will be needed to break 
up a lethargy of unbelief and sensuous dullness, equally unreasoning and 
desultory." 



PART IT. 

THE ATTACKS 01 MODERN CRITICISM ON THE INSPIRATION OP 
THE FIRST THREE GOSPELS. 



PART IV. 

THE ATTACKS OF MODERN CRITICISM ON THE INSPIRATION OF 
THE FIRST THREE GOSPELS. 



§ 31. The Relation which the Authenticity and Credibil- 
ity of the* Gospel Records bear to their 
Inspiration. 

The arguments by which we have established the 
authenticity or apostolical origin of the Gospel Eec- 
ords, and the Divine as well as human attestations of 
their credibility involve also their inspiration. To 
prove the trustworthiness of the Scriptures from their 
assumed inspiration, and then to deduce the inspira- 
tion from the testimony of the Scriptures, would be a 
begging of the question. Instead of this we have 
proved the authenticity and credibility of the Gos- 
pels, without any reference to an assumed inspira- 
tion, on simply historical grounds, and this historical 
argumentation is the only outward proof needed for 
their inspiration. With regard to outward proofs of 
inspiration Mr. Westcott remarks very justly : " To 
speak of the proof of the inspiration of the Scriptures 
involves, indeed, an unworthy limitation of the idea 
itself. In the fullest sense of the word we can not 
prove the presence of life, but are simply conscious 
of it; and inspiration is the manifestation of a 

higher life. The words of Scripture are spiritual 

26 305 



306 THE GOSPEL RECORDS : 

words, and as such are spiritually discerned. The 
ultimate test of the reality of inspiration lies in 
the intuition of that personal faculty — nvevjua — by 
which inspired men once recorded the words of God, 
and are still able to hold communion with him. 
Every thing short of this leaves the great truth still 
without us; and that which should be a source of 
life is in danger of becoming a mere dogma.'' (In- 
troduction to the Study of the Gospels, p. 45.) In 
Parts II and III we have met all the attacks that 
have been made upon the authenticity and the cred- 
ibility of the Gospels, with the exception of the ob- 
jections, which modern criticism has deduced from 
the peculiar relation in which the three first (synop- 
tic) Gospels stand to one another and to that of John. 
These objections lie, indeed, not against the authen- 
ticity and credibility of the synoptic Gospels, but 
would, if sustained, invalidate their inspiration. For 
while in ordinary historians the strictest integrity is 
compatible with slight inaccuracy, divergence of tes- 
timony — the least discrepancy — appears formidable 
in a work written by Divine inspiration. It is, 
therefore, proper to examine these critical difficulties 
in connection with the question of inspiration — a 
question which of itself deserves a separate consid- 
eration. 

Before we, however, enter upon this examination, 
let us glance at some of the general characteristics 
of the Gospel Eecords, which, as Mr. Westcott re- 
marks, can only be accounted for on the assumption 
of their inspiration. "They are fragmentary inform. 
Their writers make no attempt to relate all the ac- 
tions or discourses of our Lord, and show no wish to 
select the most marvelous series of his mighty works, 



ATTACKS OF MODERN CRITICISM. 307 

and probably no impartial judge will find in any one 
of them a conscious attempt to form a narrative sup- 
plementary to those of the others. But if we know 
by the ordinary laws of criticism that our Gospels 
are the only authentic records of the Savior's life, 
while we believe that Providence regards the well- 
being of the Christian Church,, are we not necessarily 
led to conclude that some Divine power overruled 
their composition, so that what must otherwise seem 
a meager and incomplete record should contain all 
that is fittest historically to aid our progress and de- 
termine our faith ? Nor can it be unworthy of no- 
tice that while the Gospels evidently contain so small 
a selection from the works and words of Christ, so 
few details unrecorded by the Evangelists should 

have been preserved in other ways The 

numerous witnesses of our Lord's works and teach- 
ing must have treasured up with affection each recol- 
lection of their past intercourse ; but the cycle of 
Evangelical narrative is clearly marked, and it can 
not but seem that the same Power which so definitely 
circumscribed its limits determined its contents. 
Again, the Gospels are unchronological in order. We 
are at once cautioned against regarding them as mere 
history, and encouraged to look for some new law of 
arrangement in their contents, which, as I shall en- 
deavor to prove, must result from a higher power 
than an unaided instinct or an enlightened con- 
sciousness. Once more, the Gospels are brief and ap- 
parently confused in style. There is no trace in them 
of the anxious care or ostentatious zeal which mark 
the ordinary productions of curiosity or devotion. 
The Evangelists write as men who see through all 
time, and only contemplate the events which they 



308 THE GOSPEL RECORDS: 

record in their spiritual relations. But, at the same 
time, there is an originality and vigor in every part 
of the Gospels, which become a Divine energy in the 
Gospel of John. As mere compositions they stand 
out from all other histories with the noble impress of 
simplicity and power ; and it is as if the faithful re- 
flection of the image of God shed a clear light on the 
whole narrative. The answer was once given to the 
Pharisees, when they sought to take Jesus, that never 
man spoke like that man, and those w T ho assail the 
authority of the Gospels have been constrained to 
confess that never was history written as in them." 
(Introd., pp. 46-48.) On the characteristic differences 
of the four Gospels Mr. Westcott says further : " The 
three synoptic Gospels are not mere repetitions of 
one narrative, but distinct views of a complex whole. 
The same salient points reappear in all, but they are 
found in new combinations and with new details, as 
the features of a landscape or the outlines of a figure 

when viewed from various points The 

only conception which we can form of the inspiration 
of a historic record lies in the Divine fitness of the 
outward dress in which the facts are at once em- 
bodied and vailed. No record of any fact can be 
complete. The relations of the most trivial occur- 
rence transcend all powers of observation, and the 
truthfulness of special details is no pledge of the 
truthfulness of the whole impression. The connec- 
tion and relation and subordination of the various 
parts, the description and suppression of particular 
incidents, the choice of language and style, combine 
to make a history true in its higher significance. 
This power the Evangelists possessed in the fact that 
they were penetrated with the truth of which they 



ATTACKS OF MODERN CRITICISM. 309 

spoke. The Spirit which was in them searched the 
deep things of God, and led them to realize the mys- 
teries of the faith The contrast between 

the Gospel of John and the synoptic Gospels, both in 
substance and in individual character, is obvious at 
first sight ; but the characteristic differences of the 
synoptic Gospels, which are formed on the same 
foundation and with common materials, are less ob- 
served. Yet these differences are not less important 
than the former, and belong equally to the. complete 
portraiture of the Savior." (Introd., pp. 218-220.) 
The individual character of each of the four Gospels 
the reader may find delineated in my special intro- 
duction to the respective Gospels. 

§ 32. The Peculiar Agreement and Disagreement of the 

First Three Evangelists in their Narratives, 

and the Various Explanations of this 

Singular Phenomenon. 

The striking difference in contents and character 
of the first three Gospels from the fourth presents no 
difficulty. It is easily and satisfactorily accounted for 
by the difference of the individuality and scope of the 
Synoptists from that of John, as may be seen in my 
introduction to each Gospel, as well as by the fact of 
the later origin of John's Gospel. Owing to this later 
origin, we may take it for granted that the synoptical 
Gospels were already generally known when John 
wrote; that he, therefore, purposely abstaining from 
writing anew what they had at sufficient length re- 
corded, only sought to complete them by narrating 
those portions of the life of Jesus which had been 
omitted by the Synoptists. The peculiar difficul- 
ties which claim our attention present themselves 



310 THE GOSPEL RECORDS: 

when we compare the synoptical Gospels with each 
other. 

There is in them a great amount of agreement. If 
we suppose the history that they contain to be divided 
into sections, in forty-two of these all the three nar- 
ratives coincide ; twelve more are given by Matthew 
and Mark only ; five by Mark and Luke only, and 
fourteen by Matthew and Luke. To these must be 
added five peculiar to Matthew, two to Mark, and 
nine to Luke, and the enumeration is complete. But 
this applies only to general coincidence as to the facts 
narrated; the amount of verbal coincidence, that is, 
the passages either verbally the same, or coinciding 
in the use of many of the same words, is much 
smaller. Without going minutely into the examina- 
tion of examples, the leading facts connected with 
the subject may be thus summed up : The verbal and 
material agreement of the first three Evangelists is 
such as does not occur in any other authors who 
have written independently of one another. The 
verbal agreement is greater where the spoken words 
of others are cited than where facts are recorded, 
and greatest in quotations of the words of our Lord. 
But in some leading events, as in the call of the first 
four disciples, in that of Matthew, and in the trans- 
figuration, the agreement even in expression is re- 
markable ; there are also narratives where there is 
no verbal harmony in the outset, but only in the 
crisis or emphatic part of the story. (Matt, viii, 3, 
Mark i, 41, Luke v, 13 ; and Matt, xiv, 19, 20, Mark 
vi, 41-43, Luke ix, 16, 17.) The narratives of our 
Lord's early life, as given by Matthew and Luke, 
have little in common, while Mark does not include 
that part of the history in his plan. The agreement 



ATTACKS OF MODERN CRITICISM. 311 

in the narrative portions of the Gospels begins with 
the baptism of John, and reaches its highest point in 
the account of the Passion of our Lord and the facts 
that preceded it ; so that a direct ratio might almost 
be said to exist between the agreement and the near- 
ness of the facts that sustain a close relation to the 
Passion. After this event, in the account of his 
burial and resurrection, the coincidences are few. 
The language of all three is Greek, with Hebrew 
idioms; the Hebraisms are most abundant in Mark, 
and fewest in Luke. In quotations from the Old 
Testament the Evangelists, or two of them, some- 
times exhibit a verbal agreement, although they dif- 
fer from the Hebrew and from the Septuagint version. 
(Matt, iii, 3, Mark i, 3, Luke iii, 4; and Matt, iv, 10, 
Luke iv, 8 ; and Matt, xi, 10 ; Mark i, 2 ; Luke vii, 
27, etc.) Except as to twenty-four verses, the Gospel 
of Mark contains no j^incipal facts which are not 
found in Matthew and Luke; but he often supplies 
details omitted by them, and these are often such as 
would belong to the graphic account of an eye-wit- 
ness. There are no cases in which Matthew and 
Luke exactly harmonize, where Mark does not also 
coincide with them. In several places the words of 
Mark have something in common with each of the 
other narratives, so as to form a connecting link be- 
tween them, where their words slightly differ. The 
examples of verbal agreement between Mark and 
Luke are not so long or so numerous as those be- 
tween Matthew and Luke, and Matthew and Mark; 
but, as to the arrangement of events, Mark and 
Luke frequently coincide where Matthew differs from 
them. These are the leading particulars; but they 
are very far from giving a complete notion of a 



312 THE GOSPEL RECORDS: 

phenomenon that is well worthy of that attention 
and reverent study of the sacred text by which alone 
it can be fully and fairly apprehended. 

The three Gospels exhibit themselves as three dis- 
tinct records of the life and works of the Bedeemer, 
but with a greater amount of agreement than three 
wholly -independent accounts could be expected to exhibit. 
The agreement would be no difficulty without the differ- 
ences; it would only mark the one Divine source 
from which they all are derived, the Holy Spirit 
who spoke by the prophets. The difference of form 
and style without the agreement would offer no difficulty, 
since there may be a substantial harmony between 
accounts that differ greatly in mode of expression, 
and the very difference might be a guarantee of in- 
dependence. The harmony and the variety, the 
agreement and the differences, together, form the 
problem with which Biblical critics have occupied 
themselves for a century and a half. To ascribe the 
verbal differences of the Evangelists, in their reports 
of sayings of our Lord and of events, in the midst 
of their general and substantial agreement, simply 
and directly to the dictation of the Holy Spirit, 
would make the difficulty greater instead of less. 
The singular phenomenon can be naturally accounted 
for only by assuming the interdependence of one Evan- 
gelist upon the other, or some common source, written or 
oral, or a combination of these elements. 

I. The first and most obvious theory has been, that 
the narrators made use of each other's works. Accord- 
ingly, Grotius, Mill, Wetstein, Griesbach, and many 
others, have endeavored to ascertain which Gospel 
is to be regarded as the first ; which is copied first ; 
and which is copied from the other two. It is re- 



ATTACKS OF MODERN CRITICISM. 313 

markable that each of the six possible combinations 
has found advocates, and that for the support of each 
hypothesis the same phenomena have been curiously 
and variously interpreted. This of itself proves the 
uncertain ty of the theory. It is thoroughly refuted 
by Alford. If one or two of the Evangelists bor- 
rowed from the other, we must adopt one of the fol- 
lowing suppositions : 1. That the later Evangelist, 
finding the earlier Gospel, or Gospels, insufficient, 
'was anxious to supply what was wanting. But no 
possible arrangement of the three Gospels will suit 
the requirements of this supposition. The shorter 
Gospel of Mark can not be an expansion of the more 
complete Gospels of Matthew or Luke. ISTo less can 
these two Gospels be considered as expansions of 
Mark ; for his Gospel, although shorter, and narrating 
fewer events and discourses, is, in those which he 
does narrate, the fullest and most particular of the 
three. And again, Luke could not have supple- 
mented Matthew; for there are most important por- 
tions of Matthew which he has altogether omitted, 
(e. g., chapter xxv, and much of chapters xiii and 
xv ;) nor could Matthew have supplemented Luke, 
having omitted almost all of the important matter 
recorded by Luke, from ix, 51-xviii, 15. Moreover, 
this supposition leaves all the difficulties of different 
arrangement and minute discrepancy unaccounted 
for. We pass on, 2. To the supposition that the later 
Evangelist purposed to improve the earlier one, espe- 
cially in point of chronological order. If it were so, 
nothing could have been done less calculated to an- 
swer the end than that which our Evangelists have 
done. For in no material point do their accounts 

differ, but only in arrangement and completeness; 

27 



314 THE GOSPEL RECORDS: 

and this latter difference is such that no one of them 
can be cited as taking any pains to make it appear 
that his own arrangement is chronologically accurate. 
N"o fixed dates are found in those parts where the 
differences exist; no word to indicate that any other 
arrangement had ever been published. 3. Neither 
does the supposition that the later Evangelists wished 
to adapt their Gospels to a different class of readers — 
incorporating, at the same time, whatever additional 
matter they possessed — in any way account for the 
phenomena of our present Gospels. For, even taking 
for granted the usual assumption, that Matthew 
wrote for Hebrew Christians, Mark for Latins, and 
Luke for Gentiles in general, we do not find any 
such consistency in these purposes as a revision and 
alteration of another's narrative would necessarily 
presuppose. We have the visit of the Gentile Magi 
exclusively related by the Hebraizing Matthew ; the 
circumcision of the child Jesus, and his frequenting 
the Passovers at Jerusalem, by the Gentile Evangelist 
Luke. Had the above purposes been steadily kept in 
view in the revision of the narratives before them, 
the respective Evangelists could not have omitted in- 
cidents so entirely subservient to their respective de- 
signs. Or, 4. It may be supjDOsed that, receiving one 
or two Gospels as authentic, the later Evangelist 
borrowed from them such parts as he purposed to 
narrate in common with them. But this does not 
represent the matter of fact. In no case does any 
Evangelist borrow from another any considerable 
part of even a single narrative. For such borrow- 
ing — unless it was with the intent of fraudulently 
plagiarizing from them, slightly disguising the com- 
mon matter so as to make it appear original — would 



ATTACKS OF MODERN CRITICISM. 315 

imply verbal coincidence. It is inconceivable that 
one writer, borrowing from another matter confess- 
edly of the very first importance, in good faith and 
with approval, should alter his diction so singularly 
and capriciously as, on this hypothesis, we find the text 
of the parallel sections of our Gospels altered. Let 
the question be answered by ordinary considerations 
of probability, and let any passage common to the 
three Evangelists be put to the test. The phenomena 
presented will be more or less as follows : First, per- 
haps, we shall have three or five or more words 
identical; then as many wholly distinct; then two 
clauses or more expressed in the same words, but differ- 
ing in order ; then a clause contained in one or two, and 
not in the third ; then several words identical; then a 
clause not only wholly distinct, but apparently in- 
consistent; and so forth, with recurrences of the 
same anomalous alterations, coincidences, and trans- 
positions. Nor does this description apply to ver- 
bal and sentential arrangement only, but also, with 
slight modifications, to that of the larger portions 
of the narratives. Equally capricious would be the 
disposition of the subject-matter. Sometimes, while 
coincident in the things related, the Gospels place 
them in the most various order, each in turn con- 
necting them together with apparent marks of chro- 
nological sequence — e. g., the visit to Gadara, in 
Matthew viii, 28, as compared with the same in 
Mark v, 1, and Luke vii, 26, sq. Let any one say, 
divesting himself of the commonly-received hypoth- 
eses respecting the connection and order of our Gos- 
pels, whether it is within the range of probability 
that a writer should thus singularly alter the subject- 
matter and diction before him, having no design in so 



316 THE GOSPEL RECORDS : 

doing, but intending, fairly and with approval, to in- 
corporate the work of another into his own? Can 
an instance be any where cited of undoubted borrow- 
ing and adaptation from another, presenting similar 
phenomena? We see, from the above argumentation, 
that any theory of mutual interdependence of the 
three Evangelists fails to account for the appear- 
ances presented by the synoptic Gospels. We must 
come to the conclusion that the three Gospels arose 
independently of one another* 

II. It has been assumed that there existed a written 
document in the Aramaic language as the common orig- 
inal, from which the three Gospels were drawn, each 
with more or less modification. But as this supposi- 
tion, though it would account for some of the vari- 

* On this point Mr. Norton makes the following remarks : 

"1. The conclusion that no one of the first three Evangelists copied from 
either of the other two, is important as showing that their Gospels afford three 
distinct sources of information concerning the life of Jesus. The Evangelists, 
therefore, in their striking correspondence in the representations of his char- 
acter, miracles, and doctrines must be considered as strongly confirming each 
other's testimony. Nothing but reality, nothing but the fact that Jesus had 
acted and taught, as they represent, would have stamped his character and 
life so definitely and vividly on the minds of individuals ignorant of each 
other's writings, and enabled them to give narratives, each so consistent with 
itself, and all so accordant with one another. A false story concerning an im- 
aginary character would have preserved no uniform type. It would havo 
varied in its aspects, according to the different temperaments and talents, the 
conceptions and purposes of its various narrators. 

"2. If the notion that one Evangelist copied from another is proved to be 
untenable, then the accordance among the first three Gospels proves them all to 
have been written at an early period, when the sources of authentic informa- 
tion were yet fully accessible, and before any interval had elapsed, during 
which exaggerations, perversions, and fables, to which the wonderful history of 
Jesus was exposed, had had time to flow in and to change its character. 

" 3. If the Evangelists did not copy one from another, it follows that the 
first three Gospels must have all been written about the same period, since if 
one had preceded another by any considerable length of time, it can not be 
supposed that the author of the later Gospel would have been unacquainted 
with the work of his predecessor, or would have neglected to make use of it ; 
especially when we take into view that its reputation must have been well 
established among the Christians. Whatever antiquity, therefore, we can 
show to belong to any one of the first three Gospels, the same, or nearly the 
same, we may ascribe to the other two." 



ATTACKS OF MODERN CRITICISM. 317 

ations in the parallel passages, as being independent 
translations, would afford no solution whatever of the 
more important discrepancies of insertion, omission, 
and amendment, the most complicated hypotheses 
have been advanced, all perfectly capricious and ut- 
terly inadequate to account for the phenomena. The 
supposed original is assumed to have been translated, 
altered, and annotated by different hands, and the 
synoptic Gospels are said to have been drawn from 
one or the other of these different forms into which 
the original had passed, or from a combination of 
them. A theory so prolific of assumptions would be 
admissible only if it could be proved that no other 
solution is possible. 

The "original Gospel" is supposed to have been 
of such authority as to be circulated every-where, 
yet so defective as to require annotation from any 
hand, and so little reverenced that no hand spared 
it. If the three Evangelists agreed to draw from 
such a work, it must have been widely, if not uni- 
versally, accepted in the Church ; and yet there is no 
record of its existence ; if of lower authority, it could 
not have become the basis of the three canonical 
Gospels. Moreover, the state of literature in Pales- 
tine, at that time, was not such as to make the as- 
sumed, repeated editing, translating, and annotating 
of a history a natural and probable process. (Com- 
pare §§ 5 and 6.) Happily, this hypothesis of an 
original Gospel, which, if true, would overthrow the 
Divine authority of the Gospel Eecords, has been 
found so untenable on historical and critical grounds, 
that it has been given up by its own inventors. 

III. Having found the assumption of a common 
original Gospel as untenable as that of the interde- 



318 THE GOSPEL RECORDS: 

pendence of one Evangelist upon the other, let us 
examine that solution of the problem, which explains 
the relationship of the synoptical Gospels by deriving 
them from a common oral source, that is, from the 
common oral teachings of the apostles ; which, from 
the nature of the case, we may assume to have been 
chiefly historical, giving an account of the discourses 
and acts of Jesus of Nazareth. That the written 
Gospels were the result, not the foundation, of the 
apostolical preaching, will not be called in question. 
On similar grounds, as the baptism of infants, in the 
case, was preceded by the baptism of adults, it may 
be said that the experience of oral teaching was re- 
quired in order to commit to writing the vast subject 
of the life of Christ. In the first period of the apos- 
tolic age the powerful working of the Holy Spirit in 
the Church supplied the place of those records, which, 
as soon as the brightness of his presence began to be 
withdrawn, became indispensable, in order to prevent 
the corruption of the Gospel history by false teach- 
ers. The great commission given to the apostles 
was to preach the Gospel, and it was only the subse- 
quent want of the Church, established by their 
preaching, which furnished an adequate motive for 
adding a written record to the testimony of their 
living words. Of the great majority of the apostles 
all that we know certainly is, that they were en- 
gaged in instructing, orally, the multitudes who were 
waiting to receive their tidings. The place of in- 
struction was the synagogue and the market-place, 
not the student's chamber. " The elders refrained 
from writing," it is said by Clemens, "because they 
would not interrupt the care which they bestowed in 
teaching orally, by the care of composition." Be- 



ATTACKS OF MODERN CRITICISM. 319 

Bides, the written evidence for the facts of the Gospel 
was found already in the Old Testament. All the 
prophets spoke of Christ, and to them the apostles 
constantly referred, by showing them fulfilled in the 
life of Christ. That the apostolic preaching con- 
sisted chiefly in relating the wondrous life, the teach- 
ing and the acts, the suffering, death, and resurrec- 
tion of our Lord, we learn from the conditions of 
apostleship propounded by Peter himself, (Acts i, 21, 
22 ;) that, in order to give a projDer testimony of the 
resurrection of Christ, an apostle must have been an 
eye and ear-witness of what had happened from the 
baptism of John till the ascension, that is, during the 
whole official life of our Lord ; and, accordingly, 
Paul claims to have received an independent knowl- 
edge, by direct revelation, of at least some of the 
fundamental parts of the Gospel history, (Galatians 
i, 12; 1 Cor. xi, 23; xxv, 3,) to qualify him for his 
calling as an aj)ostle. That the apostolic preaching 
was chiefly historic, is confirmed by Luke, who, in 
the preface to his Gospel, expressly designates the 
oral apostolical testimony as the source of the Evan- 
gelical narratives, which many had taken in hand to 
draw up ; and, as far as the records of apostolic 
preaching in the Acts of the Apostles go, they con- 
firm this view. Peter, at Csesarea, and Paul, at An- 
tioch, preach alike the facts of the Eedeemer's life 
and death. As to the Epi sties, they were evidently 
not designed for primary instruction, but for the 
further instruction of those who were familiar with 
the great outlines of the "mystery of godliness," (1 

Tim. iii, 16,) and had professed their belief by bap- 
tism. 

We are then led to the inquiry, in what manner 



320 THE GOSPEL RECORDS : 

the synoptic Gospels are connected with the oral 
Gospel preached by the apostles? Eefore showing 
the relation of the written to the oral Gospel, we re- 
mind the reader that the Gospel history was first 
orally delivered by the apostles at Jerusalem, where 
they formed the mother Church, and remained till 
dispersed by the first persecution. And is it not to 
be presumed that the very portions of that Gospel 
history, which form the common subject-matter of the 
synoptical Gospels, would be more frequently and 
fully dwelt upon by the apostles in their preaching 
at Jerusalem, than those incidents which had taken 
place there, and were therefore well known to those 
to whom the apostles first addressed themselves? 
This explains to us, in part, (compare my introduc- 
tory remarks to § 8 in the Gospel of Matthew,) why 
it is that the ministry of Jesus in Galilee is almost 
exclusively recorded to us by the three Evangelists 
in a manner so singularly similar. There is nothing 
unnatural in the supposition that the oral narratives 
of the apostles at Jerusalem, concerning the words 
and deeds of our Lord, would be delivered, for the 
most part, in the same form of words; on the con- 
trary, it was in the highest degree desirable for the 
teachers whom the apostles were sending forth into 
the world, and it became the most fitting means to 
secure and make manifest the purity of the subse- 
quent written Gospel. The particular points, espe- 
cially in sayings of Christ, were always reproduced; 
unusual expressions were the more firmly retained, 
since, when they were uttered, they had the more 
strongly attracted the attention of the disciples. Ser- 
mons and sayings were naturally retained with more 
care, and reported with more uniformity than inci- 



ATTACKS OF MODERN CRITICISM. 321 

dents; although even in the latter, in the same de- 
gree that the incident was surprising and peculiar, a 
fixed type of narration had involuntarily formed 
itself. Thus it was that the authors had often heard 
the points, both of incidents and sayings, narrated 
in substantially the same words. There were, more- 
over, peculiar circumstances which naturally con- 
tributed to the uniformity in question. While modern 
taste aims at a variety of expression, and abhors a 
repetition of the same phrases as monotonous, the 
simplicity of the men, and their language, and their 
education, would all lead us to expect that the apos- 
tles would have no such feeling. They were from 
the humblest ranks of society in a nation destitute 
of polite literature. Their abilities and education 
were nearly alike. Their susceptibilities for appre- 
hending the scenes they had witnessed were similar, 
while the poverty of the Aramaic Greek, in which 
they reported what they had seen and heard, did not 
admit of much variety. The first preachers aimed 
at fidelity and truth in their reports of the events 
they had witnessed, rather than at ornament. They 
had no wish to dress out their descriptions, even if 
they had been capable of doing so, and the genius 
of the dialect they employed had allowed a wider 
scope and variety. Besides, they had been accus- 
tomed, as Jews, to treasure up and hand down tra- 
ditionally the interpretations of their fathers respect- 
ing the law, and must have been disposed to follow 
the same method in regard to the Christian religion. 
ISTor would the immediate disciples desire to depart 
from the expressions they had learned from their 
instructors. On the contrary, they would studiously 
attach themselves to the form in which the Gospel 



322 THE GOSPEL RECORDS: 

narratives had orally been delivered to them. Such 
were the circumstances that contributed to produce 
and perpetuate a stereotype form of the Evangelical 
history, and to bring the oral narratives into an 
archetypal form, which was> subsequently transferred 
to the written Gospels. It is supposed, then, that 
the preaching of the apostles, and the teaching 
whereby they prepared others to preach, as they did, 
would tend to assume a common form, more or less 
fixed ; and that the portions of the three Gospels 
which harmonize most exactly owe their agreement 
to the fact that the apostolic preaching had already 
clothed itself in a settled or usual form of words, to 
which the writers inclined to conform without feeling 
bound to do so ; and the differences which occur, 
often in the closest proximity to the harmonies, arise 
from the feeling of independence with which each 
wrote what he had seen and heard, or, in the case 
of Mark and Luke, from what apostolic witnesses 
had told them. But if the uniformity of the synoptic 
Gospels is ascribed to the oral narratives of the 
apostles, it may be asked why the accounts of the 
death and resurrection of Christ given in the three 
Gospels present so few correspondences compared 
with the other narratives ? Was not this history of 
the highest interest and importance? Could it have 
failed to be repeated and dwelt upon ? Should it not, 
therefore, have presented the most marked similari- 
ties in the historic cycle ? Whence, then, arise the 
very great discrepancies running through the de- 
scription of this event in the four canonical Gospels? 
To this it may be answered, that these facts took 
place at Jerusalem, and were so well known that the 
apostles could insist upon them as indubitable facts 



ATTACKS OF MODERN CRITICISM. 323 

without dwelling on the minor circumstances. And, 
as regards the resurrection, it is jDOSsible that the di- 
vergence arose from the intention of each Evangelist 
to contribute something toward the weight of evi- 
dence for this central truth. Accordingly, each of 
the four Evangelists mentions distinct acts and ap- 
pearances of the Lord to establish that he was risen 
indeed. 

The supposition that the singular correspondence 
in matter and language, which exists among the first 
three Gospels, is to be attributed to the oral teaching 
of the apostles is strikingly confirmed by Luke, who, 
in his preface, expressly declares the information de- 
rived from the eye-witnesses of the ministry of Christ, 
that is, the oral narratives of the apostles, to be the 
only authentic source of his own Gospel, and of the 
other narratives that had been attempted. "While 
Matthew, the apostle, committed to writing the nar- 
ratives as he and the other apostles had been accus- 
tomed to communicate them orally, Mark and Luke, 
who derived their knowledge from the apostles, 
would record those narratives as they had heard 
them. There would, of course, be variations of lan- 
guage, and minor circumstances would be omitted or 
inserted, as it was orally related by differ ent individ- 
uals, or by the same individual at different times. It 
is not probable that the apostles recited in a system- 
atic series of discourses all the transactions of the 
ministry of Jesus related by any one of the first 
three Evangelists. According to the particular oc- 
casion presented, or the special object which they 
had in view, they would group together events, say- 
ings, and discourses particularly adapted to their 
purpose. They would class their accounts of the life 



324 THE GOSPEL RECORDS: 

of Christ, but they did not narrate them chronolog- 
ically. Thus we may account for the agreements 
and disagreements in the chronological arrangement 
of the Synoptists. 

As an objection to the foregoing explanation of the 
coincidence of language among the Synoptists, it has 
been urged as highly improbable that the apostles, 
whose native language was Hebrew, or rather its 
Aramaic dialect, would have addressed the Jews at 
Jerusalem in Greek. But we must remember that 
many Hellenists — Jews born and educated in foreign 
countries, to whom the Greek was more familiar 
than the language of their own nation — dwelt in 
Jerusalem, or resorted thither during the great na- 
tional feasts, and that the Greek was at the time so 
widely spread, (Josephus, Antiq., XVII, 11, 4; Bell. 
Jud., Ill, 9, 1,) that most of the natives of Palestine 
were sufficiently acquainted with it. Though the 
apostles may, at first, have preached the Gospel at 
Jerusalem, more or less, in Aramaic, it is evident 
that the Greek language was soon substituted ; for it 
is certain that a considerable portion of the early 
Christians in Jerusalem was composed of Hellenists, 
(Acts vi, 1 ;) with Hellenists Paul disputed after his 
conversion, (Acts ix, 29;) we find mention of various 
synagogues in that city of foreign Jews who asso- 
ciated together according to the countries from which 
they came, (Acts vi, 9.) As the Hellenists, with the 
converts from Greek Gentiles, soon outnumbered the 
Christians of Palestine, the Greek language was 
adopted as the regular medium of the Church to pro- 
mulgate the Gospel. That this could be done even 
in Jerusalem without provoking popular prejudice, 
appears from the circumstance that, when Paul spoko 



ATTACKS OF MODERN CRITICISM. 325 

in Hebrew, (Acts xxii, 2,) it was unexpected, and 
produced unusual attention. From this the inference 
may be drawn, that public addresses were commonly 
made in Greek. 

It is now generally admitted that the oral teaching 
of the apostles was the archetype, the original source 
of the common parts of the synoptic Gospels j but, at 
the same time, it has been considered as not of itself 
sufficient to account for all the phenomena which 
they present, without assuming the existence of some 
written documents embodying portions of that oral 
teaching, such as Luke refers to. Of this opinion is 
Alford, who says: "I believe that the apostles, in 
virtue not merely of their having been eye and ear- 
witnesses of the Evangelical history, but especially 
in virtue of their office, gave to the various Churches 
their testimony in a narrative of facts; such narrative 
being modified in each case by the individual mind 
of the apostle himself, and his sense of what was 
requisite for the particular community to which he 
was ministering. While they were principally to- 
gether, and instructing the converts at Jerusalem, 
such narrative would naturally be for the most part 
the same, and expressed in the same, or nearly the 
same words ; coincident, however, not from design or 
rule, but because the things themselves icere the *dme, 
and the teaching naturally fell for the most part into 
one form. It would be easy and interesting to fol- 
low the probable origin and growth of this cycle of 
narratives of the words and deeds of our Lord in 
the Church at Jerusalem — for both the Jews and. the 
Hellenists — the latter under such teachers as Philip 
and Stephen, commissioned and authenticated by the 
apostles. In the course of such a process some por- 



326 THE GOSPEL RECORDS : 

tions would naturally be written down by private be- 
lievers for their own use or that of friends. And as 
the Church spread to Samaria, Csesarea, and Antioch, 
the want would be felt, in each of these places, of 
similar cycles of oral teaching, which, when supplied, 
would thenceforward belong to and be current in 
those respective Churches. And these portions of 
the Evangelic history, oral or partially documentary, 
would be adopted under the sanction of the apostles, who 
were as in all things, so especially in this, the ap- 
pointed and Divinely -guided overseers of the whole 
Church. This common substratum of apostolic teach- 
ing, I believe to have been the original source of the com- 
mon part of our three Gospels Delivered, 

usually, in the same or similar terms to the catechu- 
mens in the various Churches, and becoming the text 
of instruction for their pastors and teachers, it by 
degrees underwent those modifications which the 
various Gospels now present to us. And I am not 
now speaking of any considerable length of time, 
such as might suffice to deteriorate and corrupt mere 
traditional teaching, but of no more than the trans- 
mission through men apostolic, or almost apostolic, yet of 
independent habits of speech and thought, of an account 
which remained in substance the same. Let us imagine 
the modifications which the individual memory, 
brooding affectionately and reverently over each 
word and act of our Lord, would introduce into a 
narrative in relating it variously and under differing 
circumstances ; the Holy Spirit, who brought to their 
remembrance whatever things he had said to them, 
(John xiv, 26,) working in and distributing to each 
severally as he would ; let us place to the account the 
various little changes of transposition or omission, of 



ATTACKS OF MODERN CRITICISM. 327 

variation in diction or emphasis, which would be 
sure to arise in the freedom of individual teaching, 
and we have, I believe, the only reasonable solution 
of the arbitrary and otherwise unaccountable coin- 
cidences and discrepancies in these parts of our 
Gospels." 

§ 33. A Consideration of the Inspired Character of the 

Synoptical Gospels, on the Ground of their being 

chiefly the result of the oral teaching 

of the Apostles. 

It is a postulate of reason to assume that, if the 
Author and object of our Christian faith was, as is 
historically proved, God manifest in the flesh, the 
Son of man in whom dwelt the fullness of the God- 
head bodily, this fact involves another fact; namely, 
that the records of his life, his discourses, and acts 
were written under Divine direction and preserved 
to us by Divine Providence. That they were writ- 
ten under Divine direction, or by inspiration, is, 
moreover, a necessary inference from the promise of 
the gift of the Holy Spirit, given by Christ to his 
apostles in connection with their commission to preach 
the Gospel to all the world, and to build up his 
Church. 

It was at their first mission (Matt, x) that Christ 
referred his apostles to the assistance of the Holy 
Spirit in certain emergencies of their apostolic call- 
ing ; namely, .when they should be called upon to 
give an account of their doctrine and ministry. In 
such cases he would teach them what and how they 
should speak, (Luke xii, 11, 12;) yea, their Father's 
Spirit would speak in them, (Matt, x, 19, 20.) It 
was in his last conversations with them, preparatory 



328 THE GOSPEL RECORDS I 

to the time when they should carry on his work on 
earth without his personal presence, that he promised 
them the Comforter, the Holy Ghost, who should not 
only bring his teaching to their remembrance, but 
complete it, and guide them into all truth, even into 
those truths which they could, as yet, not bear. 
(John xiv-xvi.) Announcing to them after his res- 
urrection their future mission in the words, "As my 
Father has sent me, even so send I you," and grant- 
ing them the power to forgive and retain sins, he 
breathed upon them — an act emblematical of the 
Holy Ghost, which they were to receive, (John xx, 
21-23 ;) but while instructed to become his witnesses 
in Jerusalem, in Samaria, and unto the uttermost 
parts of the earth, they are commanded to tarry at 
Jerusalem till they should be endued with the Spirit 
from on high. (Luke xxiv, 49 ; Acts i, 8.) This 
promise was fulfilled to its whole extent on the day 
of Pentecost, and from this day we see the hitherto 
timid apostles engage in the public preaching of the 
Gospel with power and success through the Holy 
Ghost, that had been sent them from heaven. (Acts 
ii, 33 ; 1 Peter i, 12.) To the Holy Ghost they as- 
cribe their doctrines and precepts. (Acts xv, 28 ; v, 
3, 4; 1 Cor. xiv, 37; Eph. iii, 5; 1 Thess. ii, 13; iv, 
8.) They claim (1 Cor. ii) that they do not speak in 
human wisdom and skill, but in a higher wisdom 
given unto them from God, through his Spirit, that 
searches all things, (v. 10;) that the Holy Ghost im- 
parts unto them a knowledge which is altogether 
foreign to the world and the natural man, (vs. 8, 14,) 
being part of that knowledge with which God know- 
eth himself, (vs. 11, 12,) but by which they are ena- 
bled to know the mind of the Lord as such that have 



ATTACKS OF MODERN CRITICISM. 329 

the mind of Christ, (v. 16 ;) that what they know in 
this way they speak not in words which human 
wisdom teacheth, but which the Holy Ghost teach- 
eth, (v. 13,) comparing spiritual things with spiritual. 
For this very reason the apostles place themselves 
not only on an equal footing with, but even above 
"the prophets," the sacred writers of the Old Testa- 
ment. (2 Peter iii, 2 ; Eom. xvi, 25, 26 ; 1 Cor. xii, 
28 ; Eph. iv, 11 ; ii, 20.) 

From all this we learn two truths : First, that the 
men chosen by Christ for the preaching of his Gos- 
pel acted, both in their oral teachings and in their 
writings, not in the capacity of merely-human wit- 
nesses, but that their testimony was united with that 
of the Holy Ghost, (John xv, 26, 27 ;) secondly, that 
the Spirit promised and given by Christ personally 
to the eleven had reference not so much to them in- 
dividually, but to the apostolical office and all its func- 
tions, as we clearly see in the case of the apostle Paul, 
inclusive of those assistants in their work whom the 
Lord raised up, and who were also partakers of the 
gifts of the Holy Ghost. 

The Holy Ghost must be conceived of as the 
Agent, who begets, guides, and governs the Church. 
In this capacity he is Christ's representative on earth. 
For this very reason it was necessary that he should 
preeminently manifest his power in those who were 
to be the chief organs through which the new life 
was to flow from the head into the whole body ; that 
is, in those who were, to use Paul's expression, the 
apostle of Jesus Christ by the will of God. But from 
the relation of the Holy Ghost to the apostolic office 
we learn, also, why we may place the writings of 

the Evangelists, Mark and Luke, on an equal footing 

28 



330 THE GOSPEL RECORDS: 

with those of the apostles, and consider them as in- 
spired. We need not attach much importance to the 
tradition that they belonged to the seventy whom 
Jesus first sent forth to preach in Judea, or to the 
one hundred and twenty disciples on whom the Holy 
Ghost fell on the day of Pentecost. It is enough to 
know that the apostles had received the power to 
impart the gift of the Holy Spirit by the imposition 
of their hands, and that they made use of this power. 
(Acts viii, 14-17 ; xix, 6.) Are we, then, not author- 
ized to take it for granted that Mark and Luke, 
whom Peter and Paul had chosen for their special 
co-workers out of the great number of Evangelists 
whom the Lord had already raised up from among 
Jews and Gentiles, received through the apostles the 
gift of the Holy Spirit necessary to give to the 
Church an inspired record of the discourses and acts 
of the Lord ? Besides, though they had not been 
eye and ear-witnesses of the life and ministry of 
Christ, yet they were the companions of those that 
had been eye-witnesses, and they heard continually 
from their lips the sayings and doings of Christ, 
having the best opportunity to obtain the fullest in- 
formation. Again, though they had not been com- 
missioned by Christ himself to teach the nations and 
to feed his lambs, yet they had been made by the 
apostles their partners and fellow-laborers for the 
kingdom of God, (2 Cor. viii, 23; 1 Thess. iii, 2; 
Philem., 24;) they were engaged in the same work 
of the Lord as the apostles, (1 Cor. xvi, 10,) and had 
to perform apostolical functions, (Titus i, 5 ; 2 Tim. 
iv, 1-5.) Although they did not plant, yet they did 
water; although they did not lay the foundation, yet 
they built upon it, and have transmitted to us records 



ATTACKS OF MODERN CRITICISM. 331 

of unadulterated truth through the same Spirit that 
was also in them. (2 Tim. i, 14,) and we have to honor 
them next to the apostles as the Divine instruments 
in the building up of his Church, and as stewards of 
the mysteries of God, (1 Cor. iv, 1.) Lastly, it must 
not be forgotten that the Gospels of ^lark and 
Luke, having been written, if not before the death 
of Peter and Paul, at least before that of the apostle 
John, must have had the sanction of at least one of 
the apostles whom the Head of the Church had au- 
thorized to bind and to loose. 

But the important question arises : In what sense, 
or to ichat extent were the historical books of the New 
Testament inspired, especially the records of the two 
Evangelists who were not themselves apostles? There 
has been much unnecessary controversy on the defi- 
nition of the term ''inspiration;" different modes and 
degrees of inspiration have been assumed. The most 
important distinction appears to us that between in- 
spiration and revelation : two terms which, though 
totally different, are often used as synonyms. Rev- 
elation is a purely -Divine act — it is God revealing 
himself to man, either by supernatural, external 
facts, such as the miracles recorded in Scripture, or 
by supernatural, internal communications, such as 
when the Spirit of God imparts to man the infallible 
foreknowledge of future events, or reveals to him doc- 
trines which lie beyond the reach of human reason. In 
the reception of such a supernatural, internal commu- 
nication, the human mind is perfectly passive, not 
thinking its own thoughts, or speaking its own words, 
but only the thoughts and words of the Spirit of God. 
Not so in inspiration. That demands human as well as 
Divine agency. The Spirit of God in inspiration acts 



332 THE GOSPEL BECOKDS : 

simply on man but through man, using the faculties 
not of man according to their natural law. God, who 
gives the message, selects also the messenger, so that 
the traits of individual character and the peculiari- 
ties of manner and purpose, which are displayed in 
the composition and language of the sacred writings, 
are essential to the perfect exhibition of their mean- 
ing. By inspiration the human mind is enabled cor- 
rectly to apprehend, and then authentically and au- 
thoritatively to make known, orally or in writing, a 
revelation which God has given of himself. The 
duty and qualification authentically and authorita- 
tively to make known a self-revealing act of God is 
evidently to be distinguished from that Divine act. 
This distinction is overlooked when it is assumed 
that, in recording the facts of revelation, the sacred 
writers wrote down every word just as it was dictated 
to them by the Holy Ghost, in the same manner in 
which God revealed to the prophets future events. 
This is what is called verbal inspiration in the strict 
sense of the word ; but the term itself, as we have 
seen, is a misnomer — it would be revelation, not in- 
spiration. Such Divine influence as takes place in 
revelation was not needed for an authentic and au- 
thoritative record of revelation, nor do the Evangel- 
ists claim it; nor would it have been in accordance 
with Divine "Wisdom to have excluded human agency 
in the communication of his revelation. The very 
evidences, for instance, of this human agency, which 
the apparent or trifling discrepancies in the state- 
ments of the different Evangelists present, answer a 
wise purpose; they convince us that they were inde- 
pendent witnesses, and that the whole story did not 
arise from some well-concerted plan to deceive the 



ATTACKS OF MODERN CRITICISM. 333 

world ; the homely style of some of the writers 
proves to us that they were really fishermen, and 
not philosophers; thus we have a convincing evi- 
dence that the deepest system of theology, and the 
noblest code of ethics ever propounded — the one 
stirring the depth of the whole human heart, the 
other guiding all human life — came, not from the 
profound speculations of the wisest of mankind, but 
either from God himself, or else from a source more 
inexplicable and absolutely impossible. The theory 
of what is called verbal inspiration, on the contrary, 
far from beino- essential to the Divine authoritv of 
the Gospel Eecords, is, indeed, as we shall further 
show, the only ground on which an objection can be 
brought against their claim of being authentic and 
authoritative records of a Divine revelation ; and 
though this theory of verbal inspiration has been 
received as if it were tantamount to plenary inspira- 
tion, it rests on no Scripture authority and is sup- 
ported by no historical testimony, if we accept a few 
ambiguous metaphors of the Fathers. "Much might 
be said," says Alford, in his Prolegomena to the Gos- 
pels, c; of the a priori unworthiness of such a theory, 
as applied to a GosjDel whose character is the freedom 
of the spirit, not the bondage of the letter; but it 
belongs more to my present work to try it by apply- 
ing it to the Gospels as we have them. And I do 
not hesitate to say, that, being thus applied, its ef- 
fects will be to destroy the credibility of our Evan- 
gelists. Hardly a single instance of parallelism be- 
tween them arises where they do not relate the same 
thing, indeed, in substance, but expressed in terms 
which, if literally taken, are incompatible with each 
other. To cite only one obvious instance : The title 



334 THE GOSPEL RECORDS : 

over the cross was written in Greek. According, then, 
to the verbal-inspiration theory, each Evangelist has 
recorded the exact words of the inscription; not the 
general sense, but the inscription itself — not a letter 
less or more. This is absolutely necessary to the 
theory. Its advocates must not be allowed, with 
convenient inconsistency, to take refuge in a com- 
mon-sense view of the matter wherever their theory 
fails them, and still to uphold it in the main. An- 
other objection to the theory is, if it be so, the 
Christian world is left in uncertainty what her Scrip- 
tures are, as long as the sacred text is full of various 
readings. Some one manuscript must be pointed out 
to us which carries the weight of verbal inspiration, 
or some text whose authority shall be undoubted 
must be promulgated. But manifestly neither of 
these things can ever happen. The fact is, that this 
theory uniformly gives way before an intelligent 
study of the Scriptures themselves ; and is only held, 
consistently and thoroughly, by those who never 
have undertaken that study. When put forth by those 
who have, it is never carried fairly through ; but, while 
broadly asserted, is in detail abandoned.'''' 

Verbal inspiration, in the sense explained, is utterly 
irreconcilable with the peculiar coincidences and dif- 
ferences which the compositions of the Synoptists 
present ; but, in rejecting the verbal dictation of the 
Gospel Eecords, we are far from calling in question 
their u plenary inspiration." By plenary inspiration 
we mean such an influence of the Holy Spirit on the 
minds of the Evangelists as prevented them from ex- 
pressing an error or untruth, in any thing essential 
to the Divine revelation, of which they were to give 
an authentic and authoritative record, both with re- 



ATTACKS OF MODERN CRITICISM. 335 

gard to its facts and the doctrines involved in them — 
yet, so that, on the one hand, the human element 
was not neutralized by the Divine agency, and, on 
the other hand, the truth of God remained unim- 
paired by the individual mind. The relation of the 
human to the Divine element in the inspired writings 
is very beautifully and cautiously set forth by Mr. 
Elliott, (Aids to Faith, page 479:) "As in the case 
of the Incarnate Word, we fully recognize in the 
Lord's humanity all essentially-human limitations 
and weakness — the hunger, the thirst, and the weari- 
ness on the side of the body, and the gradual devel- 
opment on the side of the human mind — in a word, 
all that belongs to the essential and original charac- 
teristics of the pure form of the nature he vouch- 
safed to assume, but plainly deny the existence 
therein of the faintest trace of sin, or of moral or 
mental imperfection — even so in the case of the 
written Word, viewed on its purely-human side, and 
in its reference to matters previously admitted to have no 
bearing on Divine Truth, we may admit therein the 
existence of such incompleteness, such limitations, 
and such imperfections as belong even to the highest 
forms of purely-truthful human testimony, but con- 
sistently deny the existence of mistaken views, per- 
version, misrepresentation, and any form whatever 
of consciously-committed error or inaccuracy." 

Plenary inspiration, then, properly understood, 
does not forbid the Evangelists to draw from natural 
sources of information, as Luke, in the preface to his 
Gospel expressly asserts to have done, or to quote 
from other inspired writers without giving their 
words literatim, and according to their individuality 
to differ from each other in the selection, in the 



336 THE GOSPEL RECORDS: 

manner and in the arrangement of the events which 
they relate, nor is it inconsistent even with inaccura- 
cies in matters which all agree in regarding as 
wholly unimportant, which have no reference to the 
purpose of their writings, to give an authentic and 
authoritative record of Divine revelation. Such al- 
leged inaccuracies have not yet been incontestably 
proved; but even if we admit their existence, they 
are, like some alleged contradictions, (see § 21,) due 
either to our ignorance of some simple fact, which, 
if known, would explain all ; or they furnish only an 
illustration of one of those very conditions and char- 
acteristics of human testimony, however honest and 
truthful, without which it would cease to be human 
testimony at all. Moreover, there is no need of as- 
cribing to the inspired writers a perfect knowledge 
of geography, profane history, science, etc. ; it is suf- 
ficient for their inspired character to maintain that 
whatever they affirm to be true, if it has the re- 
motest reference to religion, is the truth, the whole 
truth, and nothing but the truth, and that they never 
declare any thing to be scientifically true that is sci- 
entifically false. This is a point which concerns not 
so much the Evangelists as the other inspired writers, 
especially of the Old Testament ; yet, as it is a vital 
point in the question of inspiration, we may dwell 
on it for a moment. Though the writers of the Old 
Testament, compared with the most enlightened 
sages of heathen antiquity, show a superior knowl- 
edge of physical science, which nothing short of Di- 
vine inspiration can account for ; and though recent 
discussions of the subjects of controversy by men of 
acknowledged scientific attainments have tended to 
show that the oppositions of Scripture and of science 



ATTACKS OF MODERN CRITICISM. 337 

are far more doubtful than they are assumed to be ; 
yet — even if the charge of error in matters of human 
knowledge should be substantiated against any of 
the sacred writers — this would not militate against 
their plenary inspiration for the purpose of giving us 
an infallible depository of religious truth. Scripture 
was not given to teach us science ; it was, therefore, 
not needful to render the sacred writers infallible in 
matters of science. 

Alford, who arrives, as we have shown, at substan- 
tially the same results with regard to the origin of 
the synoptical Gospels we have tried to reach, lays 
down the following propositions respecting their in- 
spiration, which are in full harmony with the defi- 
nition of inspiration given above, and may serve as a 
summary of our whole investigation : 

" 1. The results of our inquiries may be thus 
stated : That our three Gospels have arisen inde- 
pendently of one another from sources of information 
possessed by the Evangelists ; such sources of infor- 
mation, for a very considerable part of their con- 
tents, being the narrative teaching of the apostles; 
and in cases where their personal testimony was out 
of the question, oral or documentary narratives, pre- 
served in and received by the Christian Church in 
the apostolic age; that the three Gospels are not 
formal, complete accounts of the whole incidents of 
the sacred history, but each of them fragmentary, 
containing such portions of it as fell within the no- 
tice, or the special design, of the Evangelist. 

" 2. The important question now comes before us : 

In what sense are the Evangelists to be regarded as 

having been inspired by the Holy Spirit of God? That 

they were so. in some sense, has been the concurrent 

29 



338 THE GOSPEL RECORDS: 

belief of the Christian body in all ages. In the 
second, as in the nineteenth century, the ultimate ap- 
peal in matters of fact and doctrine has been to these 
venerable writings. It may be well, then, first to in- 
quire on what grounds their authority has been rated 
so high by all Christians ? 

" 3. And I believe the answer to this question will 
be found to be : Because they are regarded as authentic 
documents, descending from the apostolic age, and pre- 
senting to us the substance of the apostolic testimony. 
The apostles being raised up for the special purpose 
of witnessing to the Gospel history, and these memoirs 
having been universally received in the early Church 
as embodying their testimony, I see no escape left 
from the inference that they come to us with inspired 
authority. The apostles themselves, and their co tem- 
poraries in the ministry of the Word, were singularly 
endowed with the Holy Spirit for the founding and 
teaching of the Church ; and Christians of all ages 
have accepted the Gospels and other writings of the 
New Testament as the written result of the Pente- 
costal effusion. The early Church was not likely to 
be deceived in this matter. The reception of the 
Gospels was immediate and universal. They never 
were placed for a moment, by the consent of the 
Christians, in the same category with* the spurious 
documents which soon sprang up after them. In ex- 
ternal history, as in internal character, they differ 
entirely from the apocryphal Gospels ; which, though 
in some cases bearing the name and pretending to 
contain the teaching of an apostle, were never recog- 
nized as apostolic. 

"4. Upon the authenticity, that is, the apostolicity 
of our Gospels, rest their claims to inspiration. Con- 



ATTACKS OF MODERN CRITICISM. 339 

taining the substance of the apostles' testimony, they 
carry with them that special power of the Holy 
Spirit which rested on the apostles in virtue of their 
office, and also on other teachers and preachers of 
the first age. It may be well, then, to inquire of 
what kind that power was, and how far extending. 

" 5. We do not find the apostles transformed, from 
being men of individual character, and thought, and 
feeling, into mere channels for the transmission of 
infallible truth ; we find them, humanly speaking, to 
have been still distinguished by the same character- 
istics as before the descent of the Holy Ghost. We 
see Peter still ardent and impetuous, still shrinking 
from the danger of human disapproval ; we see John 
still exhibiting the same union of deep love and 
burning zeal ; we find them pursuing different paths 
of teaching, exhibiting different styles of writing, 
taking hold of the truth from different sides. 

" 6. Again, we do not find the apostles put in pos- 
session at once of the Divine counsel with regard to 
the Church. Though Peter and John were full of 
the Holy Ghost immediately after the ascension, 
neither at that time, nor for many years afterward, 
were they put in possession of the purpose of God 
regarding the Gentiles, which in due time was spe- 
cially revealed to Peter, and recognized in the apos- 
tolic council at Jerusalem. 

" 7. These considerations serve to show us in what 
respects the working of the Holy Spirit on the sacred 
writers was analogous to his influence on every be- 
liever in Christ; namely, in the retention of individ- 
ual character, and thought, and feeling, and in the 
gradual development of the ways and purposes of 
God to their minds. 



340 THE GOSPEL RECORDS : 

" 8. But their situation and office was peculiar and 
unexampled. And for its fulfillment peculiar and 
unexampled gifts were bestowed upon them. One of 
these, which bears very closely upon our present 
subject, was the recalling by the Holy Spirit of those 
things which the Lord had said to them. This was his 
own formal promise, recorded in John xiv, 26. And, 
if we look at our present Gospels, we see abundant 
evidences of its fulfillment. What unassisted human 
memory could treasure up sayings and parables, 
however deep the impression at the time, and report 
them in full at the distance of several years, as we 
find them reported, with every internal mark of 
truthfulness in our Gospels? What invention of man 
could have devised discourses which, by common con- 
sent, differ from all sayings of men — which possess 
this character unaltered, notwithstanding their trans- 
mission through men of various mental organiza- 
tion — which contain things impossible to be under- 
stood or appreciated by their reporters at the time 
when they profess to have been uttered — which in- 
wrap the seeds of all human improvement yet at- 
tained, and are evidently full of power for more ? I 
refer to this latter alternative only to remark, that 
all considerations, whether of the apostles' external 
circumstances, or their internal feelings respecting 
Him of whom they bore witness, combine to confirm 
the persuasion of Christians that they have recorded 
as said by our Lord what he truly did say, and not 
any words of their own imagination. 

" 9. And let us pursue the matter further by anal- 
ogy. Can we suppose that the light poured by the 
Holy Spirit upon the sayings of our Lord would be 
confined to such sayings, and not extend itself over 



ATTACKS OF MODERN CRITICISM. 341 

the other parts of the narratives of his life on earth? 
Can we believe that those miracles, which, though not 
uttered in words, were yet acted parables, would not 
be, under the same gracious assistance, brought back 
to the minds of the apostles, so that they should be 
placed on record for the teaching of the Church? 

%i 10. And, going yet further, to those parts of the 
Gospels which were wholly out of the cycle of the 
apostles' own testimony, can we imagine that the 
Divine discrimination which enabled them to detect 
the 'lie to the Holy Ghost,' should have forsaken 
them in judging of the records of our Lord's birth 
and infancy, so that they should have taught or 
sanctioned an apocryphal, fabulous, or mythical ac- 
count of such matters ? Some account of them must 
have been current in the apostolic circle ; for Mary, 
the mother of Jesus, survived the ascension, and 
would be fully capable of giving undoubted testimony 
to the facts. Can we conceive, then, that, with her 
among them, the apostles should have delivered other 
than a true history of these things ? Can we suppose 
that Luke's account, which he includes among the 
things delivered by those who were eye-witnesses and 
ministers of the Word from the first, is other than the 
true one, and stamped with the authority of the wit- 
nessing and discriminating Spirit dwelling in the 
apostles? Can we suppose that the account in the 
still more immediately-apostolic Gospel of Matthew 
is other than the history seen from a different side, 
and independently narrated? 

" 11. But if it be inquired how far such Divine su- 
perintendence has extended in the framing of our 
Gospels as we at present find them, the answer must be 
furnished by no preconceived idea of what ought to 



342 THE GOSPEL RECORDS: 

have been, but by the contents of the Gospels them- 
selves. That those contents are various, and variously 
arranged, is token enough that in their selection and 
disposition we have human agency presented to us, 
under no more direct guidance, in this respect, than 
that general leading which, in main and essential 
points, should insure entire accordance. Such lead- 
ing admits of much variety in points of minor con- 
sequence. Two men may be equally led by the Holy 
Spirit to record the events of our Lord's life for our 
edification, though one may believe and record that 
the visit to the Gadarenes took place before the call- 
ing of Matthew, while the other places it after that 
event; though one, in narrating it, speaks of two 
demoniacs — the other only of one. 

" 12. And it is observable that in the only place in 
the three Gospels where an Evangelist speaks of him- 
self, he expressly lays claim, not to any supernatural 
guidance in the arrangement of his subject-matter, 
but to a diligent tracing down of all things from the 
first ; in other words, to the care and accuracy of a 
faithful and honest compiler. After such an avowal 
on the part of the writer himself, to assert an im- 
mediate revelation to him of the arrangement to be 
adopted and the chronological notices to be given, is 
clearly not justified, according to his own showing 
and assertion. The value of such arrangement and 
chronological connection must depend on various cir- 
cumstances in each case ; on their definiteness and 
consistency ; on their agreement or disagreement 
with the other extant records; the preference being, 
in each case, given to that one whose account is the 
most minute in details, and whose notes of sequence 
are the most distinct. 



ATTACKS OF MODERN CRITICISM. 343 

" 13. In thus speaking, I am doing no more than 
even the most scrupulous of our harmonizers have, 
in fact, done. In the case alluded to in paragraph 
11, there is not one of them who has not altered the ar- 
rangement, either of Matthew or of Mark and Luke, 
so as to bring the visit to the Gadarenes into the 
same part of the Evangelic history. Eat if the ar- 
rangement itself were matter of Divine inspiration, then 
have we no right to vary it in the slightest degree, but 
must maintain — as the harmonists have done in other 
cases, but never, as I am aware, in this — two distinct 
visits to have been made at different times, and nearly 
the same events to have occurred at both. I need hardly 
add that a similar method of proceeding w^ith all the 
variations in the Gospels, which would on this supposi- 
tion be necessary, would render the Scripture narrative 
a heap of improbabilities, and strengthen, instead of 
weakening, the cause of the enemies of our faith. 

" 14. And not only of the arrangement of the 
Evangelic history are these remarks to be under- 
stood. There are certain minor points of accuracy 
or inaccuracy, of which human research suffices to 
inform men, and on which, from want of that re- 
search, it is often the practice to speak vaguely and 
inexactly. Such are sometimes the conventionally- 
received distances from place to place; such are the 
common accounts of phenomena in natural history, 
etc. Now, in matters of this kind, the Evangelists 
and apostles were not supernaturally informed, but 
left, in common with others, to the guidance of their 
natural faculties. 

"15. The same may be said of citations and dates 
from history. In the last apology of Stephen — 
which he spoke, being fall of the Holy Ghost, and 



344 THE GOSPEL RECORDS: 

with Divine influence beaming from his countenance — 
we have at least two demonstrable historical inaccu- 
racies. And the occurrence of similar ones in the 
Gospels does not in any way affect the inspiration or 
the veracity of the Evangelists. 

" 16. It may be well to mention one notable illus- 
tration of the principles upheld in this section. 
What can be more undoubted and unanimous than 
the testimony of the Evangelists to the resurrection 
of the Lord? If there be one fact rather than 
another of which the apostles were witnesses, it was 
this; and in the concurrent narratives of all four 
Evangelists it stands related beyond all cavil or 
question. Yet, of all the events which they have 
described, none is so variously put forth in detail, or 
with so many minor discrepancies. And this was 
just what might have been expected on the princi- 
ples above laid down. The great fact that the Lord 
was risen — set forth by the ocular witness of the 
apostles, who had seen him — became from that day 
first in importance in the delivery of their testi- 
mony. The precise order of his appearances would 
naturally, from the overwhelming nature of their 
present emotions, be a matter of minor consequence, 
and perhaps not even of accurate inquiry till some 
time had passed. Then, with the utmost desire on 
the part of the women and apostles to collect the 
events in their exact order of time, some confusion 
would be apparent in the history, and some discrep- 
ancies in versions of it which were the results of 
separate and independent inquiries; the traces of 
which pervade our present accounts. But what fair- 
judging student of the Gospel ever made these 
variations or discrepancies a ground for doubting 



ATTACKS OF MODERN CRITICISM. 345 

the veracity of the Evangelists as to the fact of 
the resurrection, or the principal details of the 
Lord's appearances after it?" (Alford's Prolego- 
mena to the Greek Testament, Ch. I, Sec. 6.) 



PAET V. 
REMARKS ON THE GOSPEL HISTORY. 



PART V. 

REMARKS ON THE GOSPEL HISTORY. 



-♦♦♦- 



§ 34. The Condition of the World, Jethsh, Greek, and 
Roman, at the Advent of Jesus Christ. 

Christ being "the center and turning-point, as 
well as key of all history," it seems to us not out 
of place, in concluding this argument, to glance at 
the preparation which existed in the moral and re- 
ligious condition of the world for the appearance of 
the Eedeemer on earth. Upon this process of prepa- 
ration Neander, the father of modern Church his- 
tory,* threw more light than any of his predeces- 
sors; and, upon the foundation which he had laid, 
his worthy successors, Guericke, Kurtz, Jacobi, and 
Schaff, built their deeply-interesting researches. The 
most lucid as well as comprehensive discussion of this 
subject we find in Dr. Schaff's Church History, and 

* " By birth and early training an Israelite, and a genuine Xathanael too, 
full of childlike simplicity and of longings for the Messianic salvation — in 
youth an enthusiastic student of Grecian philosophy, particularly of Plato, 
who became for him a scientific schoolmaster to bring him to Christ — he had, 
when in his seventeenth year he received Christian baptism, passed through in 
his own inward experience, so to speak, the whole historical course by which 
the world had been prepared for Christianity ; he had gained an experimental 
knowledge of the workings of Judaism and heathenism in their direct tendency 
toward Christianity; and thus he had already broken his own way to the only 
proper position for contemplating the history of the Church — a position whence 
Jesus Christ is viewed as the object of the deepest yearnings of humanity, the 
center of all history, and the only key to its mysterious sense." (Dr. Schaff's 
History of the Apostolic Church, p. 96.) 

349 



350 THE GOSPEL RECORDS: 

quote, therefore, from him, with some modification 
and abridgment, and with the exception of what is 
said " on the moral and religions state of the Pagan 
world among the Greeks and Eomans," on which we 
have preferred the statement of Guericke. 

With the incarnation of the Son of God commences, 
and on it rests, the fullness of time. (Gal. iv, 4.) 
It is the end of the old world, and the beginning of 
the new, which is dated from his birth. The entire 
development of humanity, especially of the religious 
ideas of all nations, before the birth of Christ, must 
be viewed as an introduction to this great event. 
The preparation for it began indeed with the very 
creation of man, who was made in the image of God, 
and destined for communion with him through the 
eternal Son, and with the promise of deliverance by 
the seed of the woman, some vague memories of 
which promise survived in the heathen religions. 
With the call of Abraham, some two thousand years 
before the birth of Christ, the religious development 
of humanity separates into two independent and an- 
tagonistic lines, Judaism and heathenism. In the 
former the development was influenced and directed 
by a continuous course of Divine cooperation ; in the 
latter it was left to the unaided powers and capacities 
of man. These two parallel lines continued side by 
side with each other till, in the fullness of time, they 
merged in Christianity, which they were mutually to 
serve by their appropriate fruits, and results, and 
respectively-peculiar developments ; but with which, 
also, the ungodly elements of both would enter into 
a deadly conflict. As Christianity is the reconcilia- 
tion and union of God and man in and through Jesus 
Christ, the God-man and Savior, it must have been 



REMARKS ON THE GOSPEL HISTORY. 351 

preceded by a twofold process of preparation — an ap- 
proach of God to man, and an approach of man to 
God. In Judaism the preparation is direct and posi- 
tive, proceeding from above downward, and ending 
with the birth of the Messiah. In heathenism it is in- 
direct, and mainly, though not entirely, negative, 
proceeding from below upward, and ending with a 
helpless cry of mankind for redemption. There we 
have a special revelation or self-communication of the 
only true God by word and deed, ever growing clearer 
and plainer, till at last the Divine nature appears in 
the human to raise it to communion with itself; here 
man, guided indeed by the general providence of God, 
and lighted by the glimmer of the Logos shining in 
the darkness, (John i, 5,) yet unaided by direct reve- 
lation, and left to his own ways, (Acts xiv, 16,) if 
haply he might feel after the Lord and find him. In 
Judaism the true religion was prepared for mankind, 
and in heathenism mankind was prepared for its re- 
ception. There the Divine substance is begotten ; 
here the human forms are molded to receive it. The 
former is like the elder son in the parable, who abode 
in his father's house ; the latter like the prodigal, who 
squandered his portion, yet at last shuddered before 
the gaping abyss of perdition, and penitently re- 
turned to the bosom of his father's compassionate love. 
The flower of paganism appears in the two great na- 
tions of classic antiquity, Greece and Eome. With the 
language, morality, literature, and religion of these na- 
tions Christianity came directly into contact. These, 
together with the Jews, were the chosen nations of 
the ancient world, and shared the earth among them. 
While the Jews were chosen for things eternal, to 
keep the sanctuary of the true religion, the Greeks 



352 THE GOSPEL RECORDS: 

prepared the elements of natural culture, of science 
and art for the use of the Church, and the Eomans 
developed the idea of law, and organized the civ- 
ilized world in a universal empire, ready to serve 
the spiritual universality of the Gospel. On the one 
hand God endowed the Greeks and Eomans with the 
richest natural gifts, that they might reach the 
highest civilization possible without the aid of Chris- 
tianity, and thus both provide the instruments of 
human science, art, and law for the use of the Chris- 
tian Church, and yet at the same time show the 
utter impotence of these alone to bless and save the 
world. On the other hand, the universal empire of 
Eome was a positive groundwork for the universal 
empire of the Gospel. It served as a crucible, in 
which all contradictory and irreconcilable peculiari- 
ties of the ancient nations and religions were dis- 
solved into the chaos of the new creation. The So- 
man legions razed the partition-walls among the 
ancient nations, brought the extremes of the civil- 
ized world together in free intercourse, and united 
North and South, and East and West in the bonds of 
a common language and culture, of common laws and 
customs. Thus they evidently, though unconsciously, 
opened the way for the rapid and general spread of 
that religion which unites all nations in one family 
of God by the spiritual bond of faith and love. In 
addition to this general survey, let us consider more 
particularly : 

1. The moral and religious state of the pagan world 
among the Greeks and Romans. The religious ideas 
that lie at the bottom of all pagan religions sprang 
originally from Divine revelation, either internal or 
external. Having been darkened by human apostasy, 



REMARKS ON THE GOSPEL HISTORY. 353 

they could not, however, in the distorted form which 
they assumed in heathenism, avail to cheek even the 
grossest manifestations of unbelief and superstition. 
Resting upon myths and the vague intimations and 
feelings of the human soul, the ancient popular religion 
of the Greeks and Romans, in particular, naturally 
came in conflict with the increasing education and 
refinement of these highly-civilized nations, but could 
not vanquish the skepticism that was engendered 
thereby. Hence, notwithstanding the efforts of the 
Government and the patriotic citizen to prop up the 
declining State religion, an utter disbelief in every 
thing religious and Divine gradually spread among 
the cultivated and noble classes, and passed over 
from them into the mass of society, bringing with it 
a dreadful corruption of morals and manners. A 
species of philosophy that set u]3 pleasure as the 
highest good, and wholly denied the reality of any 
objective truth, became the prevalent mode of think- 
ing, and if here and there a man of more earnest 
religious temper felt constrained to resist the godless 
spirit of his age in its extreme forms, yet religion 
even for him lost its vitality, and God himself be- 
came the product of the human understanding. But 
on the other hand, this very unbelief, groping about 
in vain for a satisfying object, carried the germ of a 
reaction. Many, with a sense of inward emptiness 
and a dim intimation of a higher world, despairing 
of any satisfaction from the various conflicting phil- 
osophical systems, yearned after the old religion of 
their fathers, 4 and boldly grasped it again with glow- 
ing zeal, and the "barbaric" religions of Asia and 
Egypt were brought in to impart a new decoration 

and interest to the effete ancestral system, and aniu- 

30 



354 THE GOSPEL RECORDS: 

lets, talismans, and magicians found a welcome re- 
ception. Such was the general state of the religion 
of the Greeks and Eomans at the time of the advent 
of the Eedeemer. Eeckless infidelity and horrible 
superstition, both alike fostered by the reigning dis- 
soluteness of morals, contended for the mastery, and 
the great mass of the people lay sunk in absolute 
godlessness. 

A deeper religious need was awakened in some 
few minds, and these sought satisfaction in the two 
better philosophical systems of the time; neither of 
which, however, was fitted to meet this immortal 
longing of the heart. The Stoic philosophy, through 
its ideal of a perfect virtue, could indeed flare a 
clearer light over the prevailing corruption of mor- 
als, but could give no disclosures respecting the un- 
seen world and man's future relations to God. Sto- 
icism, moreover, left its disciples to the isolated strain 
of their own wills. Blindly and coldly they subjected 
themselves, for life or for death, to the unalterable 
law of the universe; to despise pleasure and pain, 
and, in case of necessity, to put an end to an exist- 
ence which had missed its aim — such was the climax 
of their wisdom. The principles of Platonism did 
not, indeed, minister to the self-reliant pride of hu- 
man nature. On the contrary, they tended to pro- 
duce the sense of dependence upon a higher Power, 
and to lead men to seek communion therewith, as 
the only source of enlightenment and moral excel- 
lence. But they could only teach them to seek, not 
to find. This consummation could be effected only 
by a mediator who " was come from God and went to 
God." Platonism, in thus hinting at a perfect relig- 
ion that was itself the substance, while all others 



REMARKS ON THE GOSPEL HISTORY. 355 

were the shadows, and in spiritualizing the popular 
religions of the time, dimly looked toward Chris- 
tianity. 

TTe have to survey, 2. The religious condition of the 
Jewish people. This wonderful people was chosen by 
Sovereign Grace to stand amid the surrounding idol- 
atry as the bearer of the knowledge of Jehovah, the 
only true God, of his holy law, and of his comfort- 
ing promise, and thus to become the cradle of the 
Messiah. It arose with the calling of Abraham, and 
the covenant of Jehovah with him in Canaan, the 
land of promise ; grew to a nation in Egypt, the land 
of bondage ; was delivered, and organized into a the- 
ocratic State, on the basis of the law of Sinai, by 
Moses in the wilderness ; was led back into Palestine 
by Joshua ; became, after the Judges, a monarchy, 
reaching the hight of its glory in David and Solo- 
mon, the types of the victorious and peaceful reign 
of Christ; split into two hostile kingdoms, and, in 
punishment of internal discord and growing apostasy 
to idolatry, was carried captive by heathen conquer- 
ors ; was restored, after seventy years' humiliation, 
to the land of its fathers, but fell again under the 
yoke of heathen foes ; yet in its deepest abasement 
fulfilled its highest mission by giving birth to the 
Savior of the world. Judaism was, among the idol- 
atrous nations of antiquity, like an oasis in a desert, 
clearly defined and isolated ; separated and inclosed 
by a rigid moral and ceremonial law. The Holy 
Land itself, though in the midst of the three grand 
divisions of the ancient world, was separated from 
the great nations of ancient culture by deserts south 
and east, by sea on the west, and by mountains on 
the north; thus securing to the Mosaic religion free- 



356 THE GOSPEL RECORDS: 

dom to unfold itself and to fulfill its great work 
without disturbing influences from abroad. And 
Israel carried in its bosom from the first, the large 
promise, that in Abraham's seed all the nations of 
the earth should be blessed. 

The outward circumstances, and the moral and re- 
ligious condition of the Jews at the birth of Christ, 
would indeed seem, at first and on the whole, to be 
in glaring contradiction with their divine destiny. 
But, in the first place, their very degeneracy proved 
the need of Divine help. In the second place, the 
redemption through Christ appeared by contrast in 
the greater glory, as a creative act of God. And 
finally, amid the mass of corruption, as a preventive 
of putrefaction, lived the succession of the true chil- 
dren of Abraham, longing for the salvation of Israel, 
and ready to embrace Jesus of Nazareth as the prom- 
ised Messiah and the Savior of the world. 

Since the battle of Philippi, (B. C, 42,) the Jews 
had been subject to the heathen Eomans, who heart- 
lessly governed them by the Idumean Herod and his 
sons, and afterward by procurators. Under this 
hated yoke their Messianic hopes were powerfully 
raised, but carnally distorted. Misapprehending the 
spirit of the Old Testament, vain-gloriously boasting 
themselves to be the people of God, utterly blinded 
as to the cause of the terrible national judgments 
they were suffering, the mass of the Jewish nation 
desired nothing but deliverance from temporal dis- 
tresses, and hoped greedily for the advent of a Mes- 
siah who should free them from the Eoman yoke by 
supernatural power, and give them the supreme do- 
minion on earth. Their morals were outwardly far 
better than those of the heathen ; but under the garb 



REMARKS OX THE GOSPEL HISTORY. 357 

of strict obedience to their law they concealed great 
corruption. They are pictured in the New Testa- 
ment as a stiff-necked, ungrateful and impenitent 
race, a generation of vipers. Their own priest and 
historian. Josephus, who generally endeavored to 
present his countrymen to the Greeks and Eomans 
in the most favorable light, describes them as at that 
time a debased and ungodly people, well deserving 
their fearful punishment in the destruction of Jerusa- 
lem. As to religion, the Jews, especially after the 
Babylonish captivity, adhered most tenaciously to 
the letter of the law, and to their traditions and cer- 
emonies, but without knowing the spirit and power 
of the Scriptures. They cherished the most bigoted 
horror of the heathen, and were therefore despised 
and hated by them as misanthropic. After the time 
of the ^Maccabees. (B. C. 150.) they fell into two mu- 
tually-hostile sects. The Pharisees represented the 
traditional orthodoxy and stiff formalism, the legal 
self-righteousness and the fanatical bigotry of Juda- 
ism. The bitter opponents of the Pharisees were 
the skeptical, rationalistic, and worldly-minded Sad- 
ducees. Their religious creed was confined to the 
mere letter of the Pentateuch, and contained only 
such tenets as they deemed to be explicitly taught in 
it. The sect of the Essenes came into no contact 
with the Gospel history. They were a mystic, ascetic 
sect, and lived in monkish seclusion on the coasts of 
the Dead Sea. 

Degenerate and corrupt though the mass of Juda- 
ism was, yet the Old Testament economy was the 
Divine institution preparatory to the Christian re- 
demption, and as such received the deepest reverence 
from Christ and his apostles, while they sought by 



358 THE GOSPEL RECORDS: 

terrible rebuke to lead its unworthy representatives 
to repentance. Law and prophecy were the two great 
elements of the Jewish religion by which it was made 
a direct Divine introduction to Christianity. (1.) The 
law of Moses was the clearest expression of the holy 
will of God before the advent of Christ. It set forth 
the ideal of righteousness, and was thus fitted most 
effectually to awaken the sense of man's great de- 
parture from it, the knowledge of sin and guilt. It 
acted as a schoolmaster to lead men to Christ that 
they might be justified by faith. The same sense of 
guilt and of the need of reconciliation was constantly 
kept alive by daily sacrifices, at first in the Taber- 
nacle and afterward in the Temple, and by the whole 
ceremonial law, which, as a wonderful system of 
types and shadows, perpetually pointed to the reali- 
ties of the new covenant, especially to the one all- 
sufficient atoning sacrifice of Christ on the cross. 
For, inasmuch as God requires absolute obedience 
and purity of heart, under promise of life and penalty 
of death, and as he can not cruelly sport with man, 
there is hidden in the moral and ritual law, as in a 
shell, the sweet kernel of a promise, that he will one 
day exhibit the ideal of righteousness in living form, 
and give the miserable sinner power to fulfill the 
law. Without such assurance the law were bitter 
irony. (2.) The law was, as already hinted, the ve- 
hicle of the Divine promise of redemption, and be- 
came by prophecy a religion of hope. While the 
Greeks and Eomans put their golden age in the past, 
the Jews looked for theirs in the future. Their 
whole history, their religious, political, and social in- 
stitutions and customs pointed to the coming of the 
Messiah, and the establishment of his kingdom on 



REMARKS ON THE GOSPEL HISTORY. 359 

earth. Prophecy begins with the promise of the Ser- 
pent-bruiser immediately after the fall. It predom- 
inates in the patriarchal age, and Moses, the law- 
giver, was at the same time a prophet pointing the 
people to a greater successor. "Without the comfort 
of the Messianic promise, the law must have driven 
the earnest soul to despair. From the time of Sam- 
uel, some eleven centuries before Christ, prophecy 
took an organized form in a permanent prophetical 
office and order. In this form it accompanied the 
Levitical priesthood and the Davidic dynast}' down 
to the Babylonish captivity, survived this catastro- 
phe, and directed the return of the people and the 
rebuilding of the Temple ; interpreting and applying 
the law, rep>roving abuses in Church and State, pre- 
dicting the terrible judgments and the redeeming 
grace of God, warning and punishing, comforting and 
encouraging, with an ever plainer reference to the 
coming Messiah, who should redeem Israel and the 
world from sin and misery, and establish a kingdom 
of peace and righteousness on earth. 

This is the Jewish religion as it flowed from the 
fountain of Divine revelation and lived in the true 
Israel, the spiritual children of Abraham, in John 
the Baptist, his jmrents and disciples, in the mother 
of Jesus, her kindred and friends, in the venerable 
Simeon, and the prophetess Anna, in Lazarus and 
his pious sisters, in the apostles and the first disci- 
ples, who embraced Jesus of Xazareth as the fulfiller 
of the law and the prophets, the Son of God and the 
Savior of the world. 

"We have to glance, 3. At the influence which Judaism 
and heathenism mutually exerted upon one another. (1.) 
The Jews, since the Babylonish captivity, had been 



360 THE GOSPEL RECORDS: 

scattered over all the world. In spite of the antip 
athy of the Gentiles, they had, by their judgment, 
industry, and tact, risen to wealth and influence, and 
had built their synagogues in all the commercial 
cities of the Eoman Empire. They had thus sown 
the seeds of the knowledge of the true God, and of 
Messianic hope in the field of the idolatrous world. 
The Old Testament Scriptures were translated into 
Greek two centuries before Christ, and were read 
and expounded in the public worship of God, which 
was open to all. Every synagogue was, as it were, a 
mission-station of monotheism, and furnished the 
apostles an admirable place and a most natural intro- 
duction for their preaching of Jesus Christ as the 
fulfiller of the law and the prophets. Then, as the 
heathen religions had been hopelessly undermined by 
skeptical philosophy and popular infidelity, many 
earnest Gentiles, especially multitudes of women, 
came over to Judaism either wholly or in part. The 
thorough converts, called " proselytes of righteous- 
ness," were commonly still more bigoted and fanat- 
ical than the native Jews. The half-converts, " pros- 
elytes of the gate," or " God-fearing men," who 
adopted only the monotheism, the principal moral 
laws, and the Messianic hopes of the Jews, without 
being circumcised, appear in the New Testament as 
the most susceptible hearers of the Gospel. (2.) 
On the other hand, the Grseco -Eoman heathenism, 
through its language, philosophy, and literature, ex- 
erted no inconsiderable influence to soften the fanat- 
ical bigotry in the higher and more cultivated classes 
of the Jews. Generally the Jews of the dispersion, 
who spoke the Greek language, the Hellenists, as 
they were called, were much more liberal than the 



REMARKS ON THE GOSPEL HISTORY. 361 

proper Hebrews, or Palestinian Jews, who kept their 
mother tongue. This is evident in the Gentile mis- 
sionaries, Barnabas of Cyprus, and Paul of Tarsus, 
and in the whole Church of Antioch, in contrast with 
that at Jerusalem. The Hellenistic-Jewish form of 
Christianity was the natural bridge to the Gentile. 
The most remarkable example of a traditional, 
though very fantastic and Gnostic-like combination 
of Jewish and heathen elements meets us in the edu- 
cated circles of the Egyptian metropolis, Alexandria, 
and in the system of Philo, who was cotemporary 
with the founding of the Christian Church, though 
he never came in contact with it. This Jewish the- 
ologian sought to harmonize the religion of Moses 
with the philosophy of Plato by the help of an in- 
genious but arbitrary allegorical interpretation of the 
Old Testament ; and from the books of Proverbs and 
of Wisdom he deduced a doctrine of the Logos so 
similar to that of John's Gospel, that some have im- 
puted to the apostle an acquaintance with the writ- 
ings of Philo. But Philo's speculation is to the 
apostle's "Word made flesh," as a shadow to the 
body, or a dream to the reality. The Theraputse, or 
Worshipers, a mystic, ascetic sect in Egypt, akin to 
the Essen es in Judea, carried this Platonic Judaism 
into practical life ; but were, of course, equally un- 
successful in uniting the two religions in a vital and 
permanent way. Such a union could only be effected 
by a new religion revealed from heaven. 

Thus was the way for Christianity prepared on 
every side, positively and negatively, directly and 
indirectly, in theory and practice, by truth and by 
error, by false belief and by unbelief, by Jewish re- 
ligion, by Grecian culture, and by Eoman conquest; 

31 



362 THE GOSPEL RECORDS: 

by the vainly-attempted amalgamation of Jewish 
and heathen thought, by the exposed impotence of 
natural civilization, philosophy, art, and political 
power, by the decay of the old religions, by the 
universal distraction and hopeless misery of the age, 
and by the yearnings of all earnest and noble souls 
for the unknown God. 

In the fullness of time, when the fairest flowers of 
science and art had withered, and the world was on 
the verge of despair, the Yirgin's Son was born to 
heal the infirmities of mankind. Christ entered a 
dying world as the author of a new and imperish- 
able life. 

§ 35. The Chronology and Harmony of the Gospel 
Narratives. 

It is very difficult to arrange in their proper chrono- 
logical order the events of our Lord's life, many of 
Which are narrated by one or more of the Evangelists 
in a different order. Alford thinks that it is impos- 
sible to combine the narratives given by the Evan- 
gelists into one continuous history, without doing 
considerable violence to the arrangement of some 
one or more of the Evangelists. We readily ac- 
knowledge that we can not gather from the Gospel 
Eecords that knowledge of the real process of the 
transactions themselves, which alone would enable us 
to give .a satisfactory account of the different order 
in which they appear in our Gospels, and with cer- 
tainty to assign to each event its proper chronolog- 
ical place ; nevertheless, there is light enough to show 
us the chronological order of the Gospel narratives 
in the main, and modern harmonists have arrived at 
the same conclusions on almost every essential point, 



REMARKS ON THE GOSPEL HISTORY. 363 

except with regard to the beginning of the Galilean 
ministry proper and the insertion of Luke ix, 51- 
xviii, 14. The late Dr. E. Robinson has given, in his 
"Harmony of the Four Gospels," a digest of the 
many learned disquisitions on the various difficult 
points, and the conclusions which he has arrived at 
in common with the leading harmonists of Germany, 
and upon which he builds his harmonistical arrange- 
ment of the Gospel narratives, have been accepted 
by all the later commentators ; their synoptical and 
harmonistical table does not vary from that of 
Robinson. But there has now appeared a work 
whose thorough researches have brought out a dif- 
ferent and far more satisfactory result with regard to 
the two important points mentioned above. TVe re- 
fer to " The Life of Our Lord upon the Earth" by the 
Rev. Samuel J. Andrews, who has done the Church 
a great and lasting service by setting the desigh 
of our Lord's Judean ministry, and its relation 
to the Galilean, as well as his last journey to Jeru- 
salem, in a light which has an important bearing 
upon the exegesis of the Gospels. "We have no doubt 
that, henceforward, Mr. Andrews will be the standard 
authority on the chronology and harmony of the 
Gospels, as Dr. Robinson has been hitherto. To his 
"Life of Our Lord," our readers will be indebted 
for much of the light which we have been enabled 
to throw upon the chronological and harmonistical 
questions in the Gospel history. By having adopted 
the results of Mr. Andrews's researches, and arrang- 
ing them in tabular form, we hope to contribute 
something toward giving his valuable work a more 
general circulation. The chronology and harmony 
of the Gospels is of so much importance that it ought 



364 THE GOSPEL RECORDS I 

to be made a subject-matter of study for itself, apart 
from all other questions, and the Bible student will 
find in Mr. Andrews's work all he needs for this 
purpose. 

Referring the reader to that work, and to our 
comments on the respective passages to which the 
chronological and harmonistical questions refer, for 
details, and for the reasons that have led us to our 
conclusions, we will here only present a summary 
of the data we have for ascertaining the year of our 
Lord's birth, and death, and consequently the dura- 
tion of his ministry, in order to obtain a basis for a 
chronological arrangement of the events narrated in 
the Gospels. 

A. THE DATE OF THE BIRTH OF CHRIST. 

According to the received chronology, which is 
that of Dionysius Exiguus, in the sixth century, Je- 
sus was born in the year of Eome 754. But it is 
now admitted, on all hands, that this calculation 
places the nativity some years too late. It can be 
proved satisfactorily that it could not have occurred 
after 750, nor before 747. 

1. It is certain that Jesus was born before the 
death of Herod the Great, (Matt, ii, 1-6.) Almost 
all chronologists agree in putting his death in the 
year 750, shortly before the Passover, (between the 
13th of March and the 4th of April.) But how long 
before Herod's death was Christ born? The answer 
to this question depends upon the length of time 
which the events between his birth and Herod's 
death — the presentation of the child at the Temple 
forty days after the nativity, the visit of the Magi, 
the flight into Egypt, and the remaining there till 



REMARKS ON THE GOSPEL HISTORY. 365 

Herod was dead — may have required. So much ia 
certain, that the nativity can not be fixed later than 
the month of January, 750. 

2. Another note of time occurs in Luke iii, 1, 2, 
where John the Baptist is said to have entered upon 
his ministry in the fifteenth year of Tiberius. The 
rule of Tiberius may be calculated either from the 
beginning of his sole reign, after the death of Au- 
gustus, August 19, 767, or from his joint government 
with Augustus, near the end of 764 or the beginning 
of 765. It is admitted by most chronologists as al- 
most certain, that Luke computed the reign of Tibe- 
rius from his colleagueship. If so, the fifteenth year 
of Tiberius and the beginning of John's ministry is 
779. From the fact that the Levites were not al- 
lowed to enter upon their full service till the age of 
thirty, (Xum. iv, 3,) it has been generally supposed — 
although there is no express law to that effect — that 
the priests began their labors at the same age. 
Hence it has been inferred that John must have 
reached the age of thirty ere he began his ministry. 
That his ministry may have continued about six 
months, when the Lord came to be baptized, is in 
the highest degree probable. If, then, John entered 
upon his ministry in the year 779, being thirty years 
old, and about six months elapsed ere the Lord, 
whose birth took place six months after that of 
John, came to him to be baptized, it follows that the 
birth of John is to be fixed in the Summer of 749, 
and that of our Lord toward the close of the same 
year or in the beginning of 750. 

3. The baptism of Jesus was followed by a Pass- 
over, (John ii, 13.) at which certain Jews mention 
that the restoration of their Temple had been in 



^N 



366 THE GOSPEL RECORDS : 

progress for forty-six years, Jesus himself being at 
this time "about thirty years of age," (Luke iii, 23.) 
The statement of Luke, "And Jesus himself began 
to be about (hakC) thirty years of age," has been va- 
riously interpreted. According to some it is to be 
understood as a round or indefinite number, permit- 
ting a latitude of at least two or three years. But 
this is highly improbable. The most natural mean- 
ing is, that the Lord was some months more or less 
than thirty. He was not just thirty, nor twenty- 
nine, nor thirty-one. This is confirmed by the re- 
mark of the Jews, at the Passover which our Lord 
visited two or three months after his baptism, that 
that the Temple was then in building forty and six 
years. This building, or rather rebuilding, of the 
Temple was begun by Herod in the eighteenth year 
of his reign, or during the year from Nisan, 734- 
Nisan, 735. The forty-sixth year following was from 
Kisan, 780-81. If the forty-sixth year is to be taken 
as completed, it was that of 781 ; if it is to be taken 
as current, it was that of 780. This calculation, like 
the former points, would fix the birth of Jesus toward 
the close of 749, or beginning of 750. But this cal- 
culation is made somewhat uncertain by the consid- 
eration that Josephus assigns the length of Herod's 
reign at thirty-seven or thirty-four years, according 
as he reckons from his appointment by the Eomans, 
or from the death of Antigonus. 

4. Astronomy is also brought under contribution 
to settle the date of the birth of Christ. Whether 
the star seen by the Magi was the conjunction of the 
planets Jupiter and Saturn, which occurred in the 
year 747, the reader will find discussed in our notes 
on Matthew ii, 1-10. We do riot enter here upon 



REMARKS ON THE GOSPEL HISTORY. 367 

this question, because, owing to our not knowing 
whether the first appearance of the constellation was 
designed to signify the annunciation of the incarna- 
tion or the actual birth, nor at which of the suc- 
cessive appearances of the constellation the Magi set 
out on their journey, we can not reach any precise 
chronological results, except this, that the conjunc- 
tion of the planets in 747 defines the earliest period 
at which the Lord's birth can be placed. 

In respect to the time of the year when Jesus was 
born there is still less certainty. Mr. Andrews says: 
" The only direct datum which the Gospels give us 
is found in the statement of Luke, (i, 5,) that Zach- 
arias ' was of the course of Abia.' It is known that 
the priests were divided into twenty-four classes, 
each of which officiated at the Temple in its turn for 
a week, (1 Chron. xxiv, 1-19.) This order, orig- 
inally established by David, was broken up by the 
captivity. The four classes that returned from Bab- 
ylon were divided anew by Ezra into twenty-four, 
to which the old names were given. Another inter- 
ruption was made by the invasion of A.ntiochus, but 
the old order was restored by the Maccabees. Of 
these courses that of Jehojarib was the first, that of 
Abia the eighth. We need, therefore, only to know 
a definite time at which any one of the courses was 
officiating, in order to be able to trace the succession. 
Such a datum we find in the Talmudical statements, 
supported by Josephus, (Bell. Jud., YI, iv, 5,) that, 
at the destruction of the Temple by Titus, on the 5th 
of August, 823, the first class had just entered on its 
course. Its period of service was from the evening 
of the 4th of August, which was the Sabbath, to the 
evening of the following Sabbath, on the 11th of 



368 THE GOSPEL RECORDS : 

August. We can now easily compute backward, and 
ascertain at what time in any given year each class 
was officiating. If we take the year 749 as the 
probable year of Christ's birth, the appearance of the 
angel to Zacharias announcing John's birth must be 
placed 748. In this year we find, by computation, 
that the course of Abia officiated during the weeks 
from April 17th to 23d, and again from October 3d 
to 9th. At each of these periods, therefore, was 
Zacharias at Jerusalem. If the annunciation of the 
angel was made to him during the former, the birth 
of John may be placed near the beginning of 749, 
and the Lord's birth about six months later, or near 
the middle of 749; if the annunciation was made 
during the latter, John's birth was near the middle 
of 749, and the Lord's birth near its end. The fact 
that we do not know how soon after the completion 
of the ministry of Zacharias the conception of John is 
to be placed prevents any very exact statement of 
dates. Luke (i, 24) uses only the general expression, 
4 After those days his wife Elisabeth conceived. ' 
Yet the tenor of the narrative leads us to believe that 
it was soon after his return to his home, and may be 
placed in either of the months, April or October. 
Counting onward fifteen months, we reach June and 
December, in one of which the birth of Christ is thus 
to be placed." To the month of December the ob- 
jection is made, that, in the night when the Lord was 
born, shepherds were in the field keeping watch over 
their flocks, and that, if we place the birth of Christ 
in that season, his baptism would fall in January, a 
month considered by some as unfavorable for the 
work of baptism. But the most reliable testimonies 
concerning the climate of Palestine show the ground- 



REMARKS ON THE GOSPEL HISTORY. 369 

lessness of the objection made on this ground. Con- 
sidering the time most probably required for the 
events that took place between our Lord's baptism 
and his first Passover, we are almost forced to the 
conclusion that he was baptized by John early in 
January, and that, therefore, his birth is to be placed 
in the month of December. 

B. THE DURATION OF OUR LORD'S MINISTRY, AND THE 
DATE OF HIS DEATH. 

We have shown the grounds upon which we may 
assume that the Baptist began his ministry in mid- 
summer of the year 779, and that our Lord was bap- 
tized about six months afterward, that is in January, 
780. Immediately after his baptism he was led by 
the Spirit into the wilderness to be tempted of the 
devil, and was there forty days. From John i, 29, 
we learn that after the temptation he returned to 
Bethabara the day after John had been visited by a 
deputation of priests and Levites from Jerusalem. 
As he sees Jesus coming he bears witness to him as 
the Lamb of God. The day following he repeats this 
testimony to his disciples. Two of them — Andrew, 
and no doubt John, the narrator of the fact — fol- 
lowed Jesus and staid with him the whole day. 
Andrew brings his brother Simon to see him also, 
and he receives the name of Cephas. The succeed- 
ing day Jesus departs to Galilee. Two days seem to 
have been spent on the way to Cana, during which 
time he meets w T ith Philip and Nathanael. On the 
third day (from the dej)arture to Galilee) the mar- 
riage-feast took place at Cana, where our Lord per- 
formed his first miracle. From Cana he went down 

with his mother and brethren, and disciples, to Ca- 

32 



370 THE GOSPEL RECORDS: 

pernaum, and remained there (John ii, 12, 13) till it 
was time to go up to Jerusalem to attend the Pass- 
over, which, in the year 780, fell upon the 9th of 
April; the whole interval between his baptism and 
his first Passover was, consequently, about three 
months. 

The duration of our Lord's ministrv can best be 

t/ 

determined by the number of Passovers which took 
place between his baptism and death, and which we 
have to ascertain from the Gospel of John. This 
Evangelist mentions six feasts, at five of which Jesus 
was present; the Passover that followed his baptism, 
(ii, 13 ;) a feast of the Jews, (v, 1 ;) a Passover, 
during which Jesus remained in Galilee, (vi, 4;) the 
feast of tabernacles to which the Lord went up pri- 
vately, (vii, 2 ;) the feast of dedication, (x, 22 ;) and, 
lastly, the Passover at which he suffered. There are, 
therefore, certainly three Passovers, and if the feast 
mentioned in chap, v, 1, be also a Passover, four. 
The reasons for regarding it as a Passover may be 
found in our comments on John v, 1 ; they are so pre- 
ponderating that a great majority of commentators 
and harmonists have declared in favor of it, and we, 
therefore, assume this conclusion as the most proba- 
ble. Accordingly, our Lord's ministry from his bap- 
tism embraced three years and about three months, 
and the Passover on which he died was that of 783. 
With regard to the clay of the month on which he 
died, we meet the much-disputed point whether he 
was crucified on the 14th or 15th Nisan. According 
to the Synoptists, Jesus partook of the Paschal Sup- 
per at the same time with the Jews in general, and 
at the time appointed in the law, on the evening fol- 
lowing the 14th Nisan, Thursday evening, and on the 



REMARKS ON THE GOSPEL HISTORY. 371 

next clay. Friday, the 15th Nisan, he was crucified. 
But according to John (xviii, 28. and xix, 14) it 
seems that Christ was crucified on the 14th Xisan, 
the same day on the evening of which the supper 
was to be legally eaten, and that, consequently, the 
supper eaten by him and his disciples the evening 
previous to his death was not the legal Paschal Sup- 
per. How John's statement is to be harmonized 
with that of the Synoptists, is considered at the 
proper place in our Commentary. This point is men- 
tioned here only on account of its bearing on the 
year in which our Lord died. TTe assume here that 
our Lord died on the 15th Xisan. As it is almost 
universally admitted that he died on Friday, the 
question arises, in what year following 780 the 15th 
Nisan fell on a Friday. According to Wieseler this 
was the case in 783. Those who place the crucifixion 
on the 14th Xisan, find that it fell on a Friday in 
782 and 786. Seyffarth contends that he died on the 
14th Nisan in the year 785, and that this day was 
Thursday, not Friday. 

Inasmuch as the duration of our Lord's ministry 
can not be ascertained with absolute certainty, from 
the number of Passovers which took place between 
his baptism and death, the following data have been 
made the basis of computing the year of the death 
of Christ. 1. The tradition of the Talmudists, that 
the power to inflict capital punishment was taken 
from the Jews forty years before the Temple was 
destroyed, which occurred in 823, is adduced as cor- 
roborative of the crucifixion having taken place in 
the year 783. 2. It has been inferred from the par- 
able of the barren fig-tree, (Luke xiii, 6-9,) that 
Christ's ministry dated three years from the Passover 



372 THE GOSPEL RECORDS: 

of 780. 3. The prophetic half-week of Daniel (ix, 27) 
has been interpreted as referring to the length of our 
Lord's ministry; but this is a mere conjecture. 4. The 
great eclipse of the sun, reported by Phlegon to have 
taken place in the fourth year of the 202d Olym- 
piad — from July, 785 to 786 — has been considered by 
some as identical with the darkening of the sun at 
the crucifixion ; but this supposition is of no weight, 
because the darkening of the sun occurring at the 
time of the full moon could not have been an eclipse. 
Besides, the eclipse spoken of by Phlegon occurred, 
according to astronomical calculations, in November, 
782. 5. Some of the Fathers were induced by the 
passage, Isaiah lxi, 2, where mention is made of "the 
acceptable year of the Lord," quoted by the Lord at 
Nazareth, (Luke iv, 19,) to limit his ministry to a 
single year, or a year and some months. But this 
supposition is entirely untenable. No less prepos- 
terous is the inference of Irenseus, from John viii, 57, 
and ii, 20, that our Lord was between forty and fifty 
j^ears old when he died. 6. According to Tertullian, 
Christ suffered under Tiberius Csesar, E. Geminus 
and P. Geminus being Consuls, on the eighth day 
before the calends of April — March 25th. This state- 
ment, although it seems to have obtained general 
currency, is inexplicable. The Gemini were Consuls 
during the year beginning January, 782. Our Lord's 
death could not have taken place in that year on the 
25th of March, for he was crucified on the 14th or 
15th Nisan ; and these days, in 782, fell on the 16th 
and 17th of April. Besides, Tertullian is not con- 
sistent with himself, assigning to our Lord's ministry 
in one place, one year, and in another place, three 
years. 



REMARKS ON THE GOSPEL HISTORY. 373 

In consideration of all the data, though none of 
them leads to absolute certainty, the majority of 
modern commentators and harmonists have arrived 
at the conclusion that the ministry of our Lord em- 
braced four Passovers, having a duration of three 
years and about three months from his baptism in 
the beginning of January, 780, to the 7th of April, 
783. 



THE END, 



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